Phoebe gulped as she stared up at the doll, feeling especially small after everything the doll had done to her. The man had gone off to finish something, with the promise that he’d return before too long, leaving Phoebe alone with her dolly once again. She knew that the doll hadn’t grown any since the last time they’d been together by themselves – though the heels did make her look a bit taller – but she still felt like the thing towered over her now.

“You are just soaked, aren’t you?” the doll shook her head, patting Phoebe’s diaper. “I guess you did change me a couple times, so I can return the favor.” Phoebe gasped in surprise as the doll picked her up, setting her down on the changing table, making her realize that this was probably meant to demonstrate how much stronger the doll was than her, more than to get her into a dry diaper. As if to confirm her suspicion, the doll raised the hem of her skirt, showing off a pair of Phoebe’s own underwear.

“I have to say, these feel so nice after being stuck in those diapers for so long. They’re just so comfortable! I almost forget I’m wearing them! Just feel them!” She took Phoebe’s wrist, then giggled in mock embarrassment as she “noticed” the mitten. “Oh, wait, you can’t feel anything, can you? Because you were a naughty little girl!”

Phoebe blushed, still mortified at being caught like that, especially knowing what the man must have thought of her. He hadn’t seemed to have any problems with it anyway, but that had probably sealed the deal for him, a sign that she was as much into this as he was, and he should continue with his creepy, perverted plan.

The doll untaped Phoebe’s diaper and set about cleaning her up and rubbing baby oil in to her skin, taking her time, especially around the young woman’s privates, taking obvious enjoyment in seeing her squirm. “What ugly hair,” the doll commented as she grimaced at Phoebe’s crotch. “The nurse will take care of that in a second! I can’t wait! Maybe I’ll see if she’ll shave your head, too! Then you’d really look like a baby! And that would be really appropriate, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m not a baby,” Phoebe whimpered.

“Not yet,” the doll half-sang. “But guess what? Once he finishes the link, I can do whatever I want with you! I can take all your memories for myself and keep you from being able to access them. I don’t think that’s quite what Daddy wants, but it would be so much fun to see you squirm around, head as empty as a newborn baby! Is that what you want?”

“No!” Phoebe squeaked in horror, not sure whether the doll was just teasing her or telling the truth. “No, please, you can’t do that!”

“I can!” the doll countered sharply, sliding a fresh diaper beneath the girl. “I can do whatever I want! Because you’re my toy! But don’t worry, I won’t do that… At least not right away. That’s no fun at all! No, I want to make sure you know what’s happening…” She grinned as she taped the diaper shut, then bent over the prone girl on the changing table. “I want you to know that you’re just a messy baby!” Phoebe gasped as she felt her bowels contract and begin evacuating into the just-changed diaper. She clamped her mittened hands to the crotch of her diaper, trying to stop it, and managing it, though it was clearly just a temporary measure. “Very good,” the doll nodded, “messy baby. Messy baby!”

Phoebe grunted, each repeat of the phrase calling up an image of the doll saying her own variant of it after “filling” its diaper. Even though she tried to deny it, part of her brain seemed to have accepted that she was now the dolly, and hearing those words made that part want to play along with her new role, and, no matter how hard she tried to stop it, each repetition caused the disaster to inch closer to becoming irreversible. Already, she could feel the mass pushing against her diaper, tenting it out slightly, only her great concentration managing to keep it as much in check as it was.

“You see? This just wouldn’t be as much fun if you simply gave in and pooped your Pampers the first time! But knowing you’re about to, and you’re fighting your very hardest to stop it… Now that’s entertainment! At least, for a little while. I’m sure I’ll get bored of it eventually and just let you be an empty-minded little baby, but everyone gets tired of their toys eventually, don’t they? Even a messy baby like you!”

Phoebe tried her best to hide the fact that the last trigger had been enough to send her over the edge, to force her body to start pushing the mess into her diaper faster than she could even try to contain it, but the accompanying sounds made that futile, and she suspected the doll would have known anyway. It was a far slower process than it had been the day before, and even more degrading, as there had been no enema to help her along. She knew she should be able to stop it, and, in fact, a time or two she did halt the mudslide’s progress, but for no more than a second or two until it began again, somehow finding more space in her expanding diaper. But the worst part came when she finished and laid there, worn out from the trial, only to feel her mouth open, hear herself say, “Messy, mama!”, just like the doll.

“And I just changed her, Daddy!” Phoebe wanted to sink through the changing table and into the floor as she realized the man had come back into the room sometime during her ordeal and seen at least some of that. “I’m not going to change her again!”

“That’s okay,” the man smiled deviously down at Phoebe. “I don’t think she wants you to. Otherwise, why would she have waited until you had her in a fresh diaper? She is a naughty little girl, isn’t she?”

“No!” Phoebe wrinkled her nose as her gave her full diaper a harsh pat. “Change me! It’s not my fault!”

“I’m sure it isn’t,” the man nodded. “Well, don’t worry… As much as I’m sure you’d love to play in your potty pants for a while longer, I don’t think the nurse will let you. And she’s ready to see you now.” He chuckled at her confused, though mostly frightened, face. “Don’t cry! We won’t let that diaper go to waste!” Out came his blasted tablet again, and a moment later, a wooden rocking horse glided into the room, bobbing slightly. “She won’t mind cleaning up a little more of a mess.”

Before Phoebe could protest, she was lifted off the changing table and put across the horse’s hard saddle, squelching her mess against her tender skin. The horse’s rocking grew much more pronounced as soon as she was in place, then began sliding after the man as he led her and the doll out into the hall and through her apartment, out across the living room and into what had been only darkness the day before. Now, with nothing left to hide, the lights were on, revealing just how massive the living room truly was. It looked like it belonged in a castle, not in the middle of some nondescript apartment building. On the other side, toy robots were working tirelessly, tearing out walls from what had been the apartments across the hall and fashioning new ones. Through the half-built walls, she could see a ballet studio, a locker room, even a miniature grocery store. But the room she was taken to was already fully done, not even a crack to give her a hint of what lay behind the door until he opened it, revealing a pediatrician’s office.

Its walls were brightly colored, and there was a large exam table in the middle, surrounded by various counters loaded with all sorts of medical equipment that Phoebe did not want used on her. There was another door, on the wall opposite of the one she’d come in by, and after she’d had enough time to look around, it opened, and another doll walked in. Phoebe turned to see what it was, only to have her mouth drop open.

It was dressed as a nurse, but just barely. It was in a white dress, but the belt around the waist was the only part of it that was fully closed. The top was split, showing off the red bra underneath, struggling to contain the doll’s huge breasts, and the front of the skirt, leaving the red panties below exposed. It wore a nurse’s hat on its head, and huge heels on its feet, along with a pair of white thigh high stockings, topped with red bows, a white cross in the center of each.

If Phoebe had any doubt this whole thing was cooked up out of the creepy man’s disturbed mind, this would have eradicated them… And yet, though she’d never considered herself to have any real lesbian tendencies, she couldn’t deny that this was one very sexy woman – or doll, rather. Looking up at her, Phoebe felt incredibly immature and inadequate in a way that didn’t come entirely from the fact that she was on a rocking horse in a dirty diaper, though that definitely amplified it.

“Is this our patient?” the nurse asked, bending down to pull out the back of Phoebe’s diaper. “Oh, my, she’s had quite the accident, hasn’t she? Well, we’d better get you cleaned up before your procedure!”

“I don’t need a procedure!” Phoebe exclaimed as the nurse picked her up and put her onto the examination table. “Please, you can’t do this!”

“She likes her messy diapie,” the dolly chimed in. “But we told her she’d have to be changed eventually.”

“Oh, does she?” the nurse smiled, pressing a hand to the loaded crotch of Phoebe’s diaper, pushing the padding through the muck and against the girl’s privates, rubbing them slightly, enough to get the girl squirming and blushing. “What a naughty girl! I don’t think Santa is going to like that!” Phoebe squeaked and moaned as the nurse continued to rub, bending over Phoebe and giving her a good view of her ample bosom, feeling the eyes of everyone around her staring as she squirmed in her full diaper. After a minute or two, thankfully, the nurse stopped, shaking her head at Phoebe’s flushed face before starting to change her diaper. “No wonder you have her in mittens,” she commented.

With Phoebe clean, the nurse flipped her over onto her stomach, leaving her still red backside exposed, and Phoebe with very little idea of what was going on back there. She tried to kick blindly in the direction of the nurse, but that just earned her a smack on the bottom and a threatening, “Do you want me to tie you down?” that got her to stay still, even as she felt the nurse’s plastic fingers running along her bare, red ass. “Do you think this is a good spot?”

“Maybe a little further down,” the man commented, a second before Phoebe felt his hand on her as well, which disgusted her even more. “That way her diapers will definitely cover it most of the time.”

“All right,” the nurse replied, walking over to one of the cupboards and pulling out a long, metal implement. One side of it was wider, and as the nurse brought it closer, Phoebe could see that it had the design of a circuit-board on it, with a P in the middle. There was a small spike in the center that gave the whole thing an even more threatening look, though it would have accomplished that nicely anyway, as the wide end began to glow and dull red as the nurse showed it to her. “This is so everyone knows who made you,” she commented, pushing the brand a little closer to Phoebe’s face.

Phoebe gulped as she stared at the thing, wriggling helplessly on her belly. Even if she wasn’t surrounded by bigger, stronger people – or things, really, in all but one case – her hands had been rendered useless, so she couldn’t have escaped anyway, not without the ability to turn the doorknob. It was all almost over… Her adulthood, her brief stab at independence, everything. She was about to be some creep’s playtoy, turned into an oversized little baby doll that really cried, screamed, and wet. And there was nothing she could do about it.

Or was there? For a split second, she stared at the brand, and that sharp point right at the center. She had just enough time to formulate a plan, and then she lashed out, trying to knock the thing out of the nurse’s grip with her own mittened hand. She could feel the heat of the metal through the glove, but, more importantly, she could feel the slightest bit of cool, fresh air on her index finger, right before the man grabbed her arm and pulled it away, letting the nurse back up. The doll quickly stepped up to grab Phoebe’s other hand, and the pair pulled her appendages forward, pulling straps from the surface of the table and fastening them into place before the man stepped behind her and locked one over her back as well.

“Would you care to do the honors?” he asked, though Phoebe wasn’t sure who he was asking until the doll version of her grinned.

“Oh, yes,” it said, walking past the girl’s worried head and to her backside, where she delivered a dozen hard swats to her bottom. “I think she likes her spankings as much as her diapers,” the doll mentioned once she was done. “Look at how many she’s earned already!”

“I think you may be right,” the man agreed. “She’s just the perfect fit for the role, isn’t she?”

And she was right. For a moment, Phoebe felt nothing, and then there was a searing pain on one butt cheek, making her yelp, the overall pain distracting her as the metal bit at the center jabbed further into her flesh, depositing something inside before the whole thing retracted, and the nurse pulled it away. Instantly, she could feel something was wrong, as memories began to vanish and reappear at random, as if somebody was rifling through them, pulling them out to read them and then sticking them back in.

“Oh, this is fantastic!” the doll version of her crowed. “Look at all this!”

“Why don’t you go process it all,” the man suggested. “I’ll take care of the little one.”

The doll nodded, walking out as the man stepped back around to the front of the table. “Now you’re all mine, baby doll.”

Phoebe stared up at him, opening her mouth to tell him off, but all that tumbled from it was a string of unintelligible, “Goo-ga goo”s. She gave a look of confusion, feeling the nurse treat the wound she’d just made on Phoebe’s rump, covering it up with something before unstrapping Phoebe and rolling her over onto a fresh diaper.

“What was that?” the man teased, staring down at her.

“Ga ga goo!” Phoebe tried again.

“How sweet!” the man laughed. “She must have taken away your language center. She’s a little troublemaker, just like you! Maybe one day you’ll grow up to be just like her!”

Phoebe glared at him, trying to send the message of, “I am her!” with her eyes, a moment before they unfocused, leaving a blank expression on her face. She brought one hand up to her mouth, but with the mittens, couldn’t find her thumb to suck it, so she began to cry.

The man sighed, opening a drawer under the exam table and pulling out a pacifier. “Well, this is no fun,” he pouted as he shoved the thing into the girl’s mouth. “I guess she decided to try to take it all in at once.” After a moment, Phoebe peed into the diaper as the nurse was pulling it up between her legs. “That stupid doll,” the man sighed. “But I guess she’ll be done with it faster this way.”

The nurse got out another fresh diaper and cleaned Phoebe’s privates with a wipe before taping her up, bending down to lift the girl into a sitting position. Phoebe clumsily tried to follow the woman as she straightened back up, reaching out for her chest. “I think she’s hungry,” the man commented, perking up a little at that. “Feed her.”

The nurse sat down on the table beside Phoebe, letting the girl crawl into her lap before pushing her barely-there dress aside, exposing her plastic breast. Phoebe clamped right on, closing her eyes as she began to suck instinctively, letting the sweet, thick milk fill her mouth. It started out slightly cool, then slowly became warmer, like it should be, as the cooling mechanism inside her that kept it fresh shut down temporarily. Phoebe drank it down quickly, hungrily, not seeming to notice as she took too much and it wound up running down her cheeks, crying when the nurse took her off one breast to switch her to the other side.

“This should be fun when she’s back to her old self,” the man commented as he watched. “Just imagine how much she’ll pout when she finds out she has her own, personal wet nurse. I bet she’ll earn herself quite a few more spankings, refusing to drink… Then we can show her the video of this, of how eager she was this time, to prove what a big baby she really is, right before you make her suck anyway.”

Her belly full, Phoebe pulled away, a little light-headed, then reached out for the man with a sniffle. “Da da!”

The man looked at her with a sigh, waving the nurse aside. She plopped Phoebe down beside her on the table and got down, heading out the door she’d come in by, her job done for now. The man sat down in her place, letting Phoebe crawl into his lap and curl up there. “I guess this isn’t so bad, either,” he mused, smoothing her hair down with one hand. He laughed as she clumsily tried to climb up his chest a couple times, giggling like an innocent baby before reaching out with her mittened hands and clamping one of his hands between them. He looked at her in confusion for just a moment, before she tugged his hand to her mouth, and she pushed his fingers inside.

He watched her nervously for a few moments, but when it became obvious that she didn’t appear to be trying anything, he let her continue greedily sucking at them. “What a sweet little baby,” he said with a laugh. “When you get a little more of your brain back, I’ll give you something else to suck…” Phoebe reached up again, this time taking his hand back out of her mouth, pushing it back to the side and down toward the exam table’s top as she sat up straighter, her other hand on his chest as she reached up and began to kiss him with everything she had.

For a few seconds after she finished, settling back down in his lap and smiling sweetly as she pulled his fingers back to her mouth, he was too stunned to say anything, and then, with a cocky grin, he told her, “Merry Christmas to you, too. I knew you liked this. We’re going to have lots of fun together!”

Phoebe gave him one last moment of a smile, and then she bit down. The warm taste of copper filled her mouth, but she kept clamping down, glaring angrily up at him, before finally letting them go, pushing him backward as she hopped off the table. She pushed her hand through the hole she’d been widening in her mitten, ever since she’d started it with the brand, and grabbed his tablet, which she’d grabbed out of his pocket as she’d pretended to be climbing up his chest, and which she’d just pushed his finger over the “Exeute” button on while kissing him, and ran for the door, slipping the device under her arm as she turned the doorknob and slipped outside.

She pushed the door closed with her foot and kept running, grabbing the tablet as she went, hurling it at a wall as soon as she could, feeling a huge satisfaction as she watched the screen shatter on impact. She had to hop over and around what seemed like a legion of still robots, rendered powerless by the command she’d managed to find, while sitting on his lap, pretending to be a silly, mindless baby, praying that he’d be too distracted by her to notice her eyes keep darting off to the side, her free hand flicking through screen after screen on his device.

She could hear the door open behind her, which gave her the motivation to move faster, to try to ignore the diaper throwing off her balance, and the pain in her backside from the brand that would forever remind her of this insane little adventure, to go with the memories. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to forget forcing herself to act like an infant, voluntarily breastfeeding, telling herself that she had to act like she really wanted it, that she wasn’t fighting the urge to gag the whole time, if she wanted him to buy her performance.

She stopped for a second as she saw the looming figure of Santa in front of her, the memory of the day before flashing before her eyes as she stared up at the doll’s girth, at the bare spot where she’d plucked part of his beard free. Between it and the man, she was sure she’d be caught, but as she tried to jump away from Santa, she realized that he wasn’t moving. She breathed a sigh of relief, sure that this meant the emergency purse command had done what she’d hoped and shut down the whole “dollhouse” the man had been constructing, sure that she was safe.

Except, of course, for the man. She heard him just in time, spinning right as he came up behind her, rage in his eyes. Hardly thinking, she shoved the Santa doll over right into him, pinning him beneath the lifeless bulk. “Merry Christmas, asshole!” she panted, unable to resist the urge to kick him in the side before hurrying off toward the fireplace.

Epilogue – Christmas Presents

“It was complicated,” was the best Phoebe could come up with as she sat on Joan’s couch the next day, squirming in place, her rump still sore from everything it had been subjected to. “I lost my phone, and I got sick, and then there was this whole thing with the apartment… I should never have moved in there to begin with. The landlords were just crazy.”

“I was just worried when I didn’t hear anything from you,” Joan told her with a hug. “I’m glad you’re okay, though!”

“Yeah,” Phoebe smiled weakly. She supposed she was okay… It had been pretty humiliating, running down the streets dressed as she was, trying to get a taxi to stop for her. She was lucky that her mother was going to visit her sister for the holidays, so she could go there and break in through the window in her old bedroom, the one she never bothered to lock, and which, thankfully, her mother hadn’t checked before going on her trip. The taxi’s fee had been enormous, and she would have a hard time explaining why she’d had to raid the money stash her mother kept hidden in the kitchen for a rainy day, but she was sure it would all work out in the end.

“Don’t you ‘yeah’ me! You have no idea how freaked out I was when I went over there last night and saw all those police cars!”

Phoebe nodded absentmindedly, glad to hear that the police had responded to her anonymous tip, pausing as she wondered, “What were you doing there?”

“Well, you never got back to me, so I stopped by to get… you know what.” Phoebe looked at her in confusion, and the other woman nodded over toward Trixie, sitting on the floor and tearing wrapping paper off of her last present, reaching into the box to pull out the dolly.

Phoebe’s blood ran cold as the little girl ran up to her mother, spouting thanks as she gave her a hug, giving Phoebe a close up view of the doll, close enough that she could tell it was, indeed, hers. It was back to its smallest size, its eyes painted on again instead of glass, but that did very little to make it less creepy.

As soon as the girl had run off back to her box, Phoebe hissed, “Where did you get that?” to Joan.

“Where you left it for me,” Joan answered, confused. “In the lobby with the doorman.”

“But I didn’t!” Phoebe shook her head. “Joan, you have to take that away from her!”

“What are you talking about?” Joan shook her head. “Look how much she likes it! You were right, it does look kinda like you, but I think it’s cute, not creepy!”

“Joan, you don’t understand!” Phoebe whispered. “That thing…” She looked down in surprise as she felt a warm wetness spreading through her panties, then looked up to see that Trixie already had the bottle out and was feeding the doll. “No,” Phoebe whimpered. A few moments later, once Trixie had removed the bottle, she felt her mouth move to say, “Wet, mama!” in unison with the doll.

“You played with it before you gave it to me, didn’t you?” Joan teased. “That’s so cute! But you can’t expect me to take it away from her now!”

“Well, I just… You…” Phoebe stammered, trying to come up with some way to get the doll away from the little girl without seeming like a bitch.

Before she could come up with something, Joan looked over at her with a gasp. “Phoebe, are you okay?” Phoebe blushed as she followed her friend’s gaze down to her crotch, realizing her accident had been discovered.

Phoebe stared over at the little girl playing with the infernal doll, watching as she pulled the bed, the bowl, and the food mixes out of the box. It looked like she was still linked to the doll, at least slightly, even with it back in its mostly harmless state, which should at least mean that Trixie was safe from its influence – anyway, the doll had been made for Phoebe in the first place, so even if there wasn’t a connection, she wasn’t sure the doll would work with Trixie anyway.

But, even so, she grabbed a pad of paper from the end table beside her, jotting down the three rules just to be safe. “I forgot about this. She needs these, too. I’m really sorry about your couch, I’m still feeling kinda sick. I think I should head home.”

Joan told her goodbye worriedly, then Phoebe knelt down beside Trixie. “Did you have an accident?” Trixie asked with surprise. “So did my dolly!”

“I know,” Phoebe blushed, too embarrassed to even try to ask the girl for the doll now, though she had a feeling it wouldn’t have worked anyway, and there was no way she could just take it and run. She sighed, handing Trixie the paper with the rules on it. “Listen, I had a dolly just like that once, and there are some really important rules for taking care of it. And you want to be a good mommy, don’t you?” The little girl nodded seriously. “Okay. Merry Christmas, Trixie.”

As Phoebe walked out of the house, the little girl ran to her mother, asking her to read her the rules. “Okay, sweetie,” Joan said, taking the paper. “Let’s see… One, keep a close eye on her, because she can be a real troublemaker. That’s good advice! Two, don’t feed her too much, and make sure to change her right away when you do. And three, she has to be asleep by 7:45 pm every night. That’s right before your bedtime! That works out well, huh?”

Phoebe tried hard not to think too hard about them, worried that the girl wouldn’t follow the first part of the second rule as closely as she should – but she had to try, and forbidding it outright was certainly not going to work since the girl already knew the doll could use its diaper – and just as concerned that she would enforce the third rule. She stopped on the way home at a drugstore, thankful they were open on Christmas, and bought herself a package of diapers with more of her mother’s rainy day fund, taping herself into one in the bathroom, very glad to have done so when, a few minutes from her mother’s house, she felt it begin to fill as Trixie began to feed the doll. That was bad enough by itself, even if she hadn’t found herself announcing, “Messy, mama!” when she was done.

Throughout the day, despite the rules, Phoebe wet herself quite a few times, able only to slightly muffle the declaration of her “accident” by clamping her hand over her mouth. She made herself get ready for bed at 7:30, then lay in wait, sure that any moment Trixie would be putting the doll to bed. And, sure enough, before the clock turned 7:45, she had fallen fast asleep. She really wished she could have set that bedtime for later, suspecting rightly that she was sentencing herself to the same one, but she wanted to make sure the doll was safely tucked in well before the actual time, to be sure it couldn’t get up to no good.

She was glad that Trixie was following the rules, or at least the important parts of them, and that her connection would hopefully keep the girl safe, even if it meant she had become, by proxy, another one of Trixie’s playthings, and that she was always at risk of wetting or messing herself and immediately shouting that fact to the world. She was even glad that the girl had liked the present, since she knew how much trouble Joan had been having, finding the perfect gift. And Trixie was sure to outgrow it eventually, and hopefully then she could convince Joan to give it back to her, so she could destroy it, or at least watch over it herself.

All kids outgrew their Christmas presents eventually, she knew. She coud only hope that this was one Christmas present Trixie outgrew very, very soon, because she had had more than enough of being somebody’s baby doll.

Phoebe had a strange dream that night. She dreamt a strange, tickling feeling woke her in the middle of the night, after a few closed-eye attempts at batting the offending sensation away. It was a struggle to open her eyes, but somehow, she managed it, getting a view of a footed sleeper on her body. Or, rather, half of one, as it looked like it was in the midst of being made around her. Confused, she followed the string from the unfinished side with her eyes, looking up at the side of her bed.

There, in the faint light of her nightlight, was perched what looked like a huge spider, at least as big as a chihuahua, facing away from her. She gasped, eyes widened as she felt her diaper grow warm. Even that noise was enough to alert the thing, and it scampered around to face her. It was then that she saw that, while the bottom half had eight legs and a spinneret, sure, the top half was actually, as far as she could tell, the teddy bear she’d had since she really was a toddler. In its furry arms, it held one of her old blazers, all ripped up now, its mouth – which had never opened before – halfway through chewing a bite of it.

Her bladder continued to empty as she screamed, and the teddy-bear-spider crawled quickly away. Her heart pounded as she laid there, feeling helpless, fighting to keep her eyes from closing again, knowing that, once she was asleep, it could just come back, but in a matter of moments, her eyelids had slammed shut again.

It had to be a dream, of course, though she supposed it wasn’t that much crazier than anything else that had happened to her since she’d gotten that doll. But when she woke back up, as the mother lifted the rail off her bed, the lights on, making her plastic face all the more visible, she was still in just her diaper, which, like in her dream, was quite wet. “I should have known,” the mother chuckled as she carried Phoebe to the changing table. “Your big sister had a dry night, but there was no way both of you could do that in one night, is there?”

“Big… sister?” Phoebe blinked, confused. Was she talking about the cheerleader? She had never gotten the impression that they thought she was their daughter… She shook her head, just having to stare up at the thing in the midst of changing her diaper to remind herself that it didn’t think anything. It was a doll, just like her Christmas present, except bigger. It wasn’t even trying to hide it now, probably because she had already figured it out.

“Yes! You should be proud of her! If she keeps it up, she’ll be completely out of Pull-Ups in no time! She won’t even need them for bedtime!” Phoebe blushed at that, wanting to say that she didn’t need them even for bedtime, but, frankly, after the past couple nights, she wouldn’t have believed it, either. The mother taped the diaper snugly in place and picked her up, carrying her to the kitchen, where the cheerleader and the dolly were both sitting at the table, eating.

Phoebe knew right away that it hadn’t been the cheerleader the mother was talking about. She gulped as she looked at the dolly sitting there, in a real seat, holding a fork and feeding herself, wearing a cutesy white dress dotted with pink hearts, a pink sweater over top of it. As Phoebe herself was set into the high chair, she had no doubt that it was the doll now that was the “big sister”. Phoebe wrinkled her nose as another bowl of oatmeal was plopped down on the tray, this time with a bottle instead of a sippy cup.

“Oh, I wanna help! I’ll feed her!”

Phoebe looked over at the doll in shock, surprised to not only hear it say more than “Wet, mama,” but to hear it in what seemed like her own voice. It was always hard to identify, since it sounded different in her head than on a recording, but she had a bad feeling that was just what it was.

“What a good girl!” the mother patted the doll on the head as it popped up and scurried over to the high chair. “Helping with your baby sister! Your daddy will be so proud!”

“Daddy’s coming home?!” the dolly squealed.

“Of course, silly,” the cheerleader chimed in. “It’s Christmas Eve!”

Was that right? Phoebe tried to think, her sense of time all messed up from everything that had happened, her concentration not helped by the doll’s attempts to shove overly-full spoon-loads of oatmeal into her mouth, which resulted in her having what seemed like just as much of the gunk on her as in her belly, which was just as well, frankly. It seemed like the transformation that not only she, but the apartment, had gone through should have taken far longer than the couple days between opening the box and Christmas Eve, though, when she thought about it, it really had been just earlier that week that she had been a normal adult, moving into her new place, working, not even thinking about diapers, or dolls. Now she was captive to both those things, in some strange, nightmare version of reality.

And who in the world was “Daddy”? Another of the giant dolls? She’d already met more than enough of those, and she had yet to like any of them; she doubted this one would be any different. That feeling was compounded as the doll giggled, “Daddy isn’t going to be happy with the baby, is he?” as she jammed the baby bottle into Phoebe’s oatmeal-ringed mouth. Phoebe wasn’t a big fan of milk to begin with, and this bottle was lukewarm, making it all the more disgusting, though there wasn’t much she could do about it at the moment.

“She has been very naughty,” the mother noted, stepping in front of the high chair to watch the bottle feeding, adjusting the doll’s hold on the bottle slightly and then nodding. “Earning not one, but two, punishments from Santa! I just don’t know what we’re going to do with her! But I’m sure he’ll know what to do!”

The doll nodded, finally loosening her grip on the bottle now that Phoebe had been forced to drain it. She reached under the tray, patting the crotch of Phoebe’s diaper. “Wet baby,” she commented, staring into Phoebe’s eyes. Those words, so close to the first thing she had said, had completely changed now, transforming yet again into a command that Phoebe almost found herself obeying automatically, a few drops of urine dripping their way into her diaper before she could stop herself. It was only then that she realized that the doll’s painted eyes were gone now, replaced with glass ones – or whatever the other dolls had, that would have looked just real enough in dim light, though now, with the lights on, they were clearly not.

“Is she already?” the mother tsked, stepping forward and slipping a pair of fingers into the legband of the diaper. She wasn’t wearing her gloves now, Phoebe realized as she felt the thing’s cool plastic “flesh” on her skin. She shivered, wondering how she had ever mistaken these things for real people. “It’s just a little… She’ll be okay for now.”

“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of chances for that,” the mother consoled her, walking over to the sink to get a washcloth and start cleaning Phoebe up from her breakfast.

“Yeah, she’s a real fountain,” the cheerleader chimed in. “Do you think she’ll ever get out of diapers?”

“Now, now,” the mother admonished her, running the cloth over Phoebe’s face and chest, “you used to wet yourself just as much.” Phoebe found herself feeling a little impressed as she watched the teen’s fake cheeks turn red, surprised to see how real whoever had made them was able to get it to look. “Come on, dear, you can at least help get her dressed for Daddy.”

The doll clapped her hands excitedly, then, as the mother put Phoebe on the floor, hurried over to grab her hand, following after the mother obediently and pulling her “sister” behind. It wasn’t even particularly surprising anymore when the mother took a dress that matched the doll’s out of her closet, even though Phoebe knew she owned nothing like it. The doll mostly “helped” by standing back and watching, though the mother did let her put Phoebe’s socks on and fetch the ribbons for her hair from the dresser. Phoebe’s dress was, of course, shorter than the doll’s, leaving her diaper at least halfway exposed.

“Now, you two play nice together until your Daddy gets home,” the mother instructed, leaving them to their own devices once Phoebe was dressed. Phoebe eyed the doll nervously, feeling suddenly nervous to be left alone with it. She had noticed it on the trip to her room, of course, but it hadn’t really sunk in until now that the doll had somehow become the same size as her. In its Mary-Jane shoes, in fact, it was a little taller, since she was in soft-soled crib shoes herself. And, just like the other dolls, it was probably stronger than her. Phoebe gulped as she stared up at it, taking a tentative step backward, recalling how mean she had been to the doll when she’d first gotten it, and recognizing the position she was now in.

“I-I’m sorry I was mean to you!” she squeaked as the doll advanced on her.

“You said that the first night, too,” the doll pouted. “Then you still ignored my bedtime, and left me in a messy diaper… I don’t think you’re sorry at all.”

“I am!” Phoebe nodded. “Please, I’ll be so nice to you from now on! I’ll buy you pretty clothes, and change you the minute you use your diaper! I swear!” She winced as the doll grabbed her hands, forcing them up above her head and pinning them to the wall behind her. “Please don’t hurt me!”

“Hurt you?” the doll laughed. “I don’t want to hurt you! If it hadn’t been for you breaking all the rules, I wouldn’t be like this, not so soon. I want to thank you.”

She turned her head to look at the closet. When Phoebe followed her eyes, her heart began to pound as she saw something walking out on four legs, sure it was one of those huge rats, or whatever they were, she had been seeing. She felt rather silly when it turned out to be what looked like a stuffed unicorn toy. It wasn’t hers, though she had a feeling it had probably belonged to someone in the building at one time, because it looked very much like a regular toy that had somehow come to life – she suspected it might even be from My Little Pony, though she didn’t know that for sure. It was certainly strange that it was walking around, but, frankly, it could have been so much worse.

And then she noticed its horn. There was something odd about the very end of it. It was rounded, rather than a point, though that could have just been for safety. The very tip, however, was separated from the rest by a small blue rod. There was something about it that looked very familiar, but it wasn’t until the thing reached her, and pressed the tip of its horn into the slightly damp crotch of her diaper, that she recognized it, just a moment before it began to buzz. She gasped, squirming against the doll’s hands as, even through the diaper’s padding, the vibrator sent a wave of bliss through her body. She didn’t know for sure that it was her Hitachi, specifically – she hoped so, though it probably didn’t matter that much with the diaper there – but even if it wasn’t, it worked just as well.

Despite her humiliating position, despite everything she had been through the past couple days – or perhaps because of it, as she hadn’t had a chance to have any fun with it for quite a while, in between moving and all this – she felt her breath quickening, her nether regions getting wet in a very different way than they already were after her accident. “Stop it,” she whined, cheeks bright red as she stared into a duplicate, grinning, plastic version of her face.

“I’m giving you a reward,” the doll told her, smiling wider as Phoebe squeaked when the vibrator began going even faster. “You’ve had nothing but punishments the past couple days… Don’t you think it’s time for something else?”

“I… I…” Phoebe panted, interrupting herself with a half-muted moan.

“Don’t you like it? I think you do…” the doll inquired, full of fake innocence.

“I-I do,” Phoebe had to admit. “B-But…”

“‘B-But’ what?” the doll mocked, signaling the unicorn to speed up yet again. Phoebe’s eyes rolled back in her head slightly even as she tried to dance away from the vibrator, followed by the unicorn with every little squirm she could manage while the doll held her in place. “‘B-But’ you don’t want to cum in your diapies? Is that it?” Phoebe could only manage a small whine now, her head swimming with delight, her knees starting to feel weak. “Well, that’s the only place you’ll be doing that from now on, baby. So I think you’d better get used to it!”

With that, the unicorn kicked it horn up to the highest speed. Phoebe gave one more shuddering gasp before her back arched and her whole body quivered, then exploded with pleasure. The doll let go of her, and she fell to her knees, the unicorn prancing desperately to get out of her way. It was the most powerful orgasm she’d felt in a long time, and she wasn’t sure how long it took for her to snap back into reality after it, though by the time she did, she had to wipe a line of drool from her mouth.

She was too embarrassed to look the doll in the eye after that, but it turned out not to be a problem. As she stared at the doll’s knees, she could see its head, way up above them, tilt just slightly before she exclaimed, “Daddy’s home!” and hurried out of the room.

Phoebe’s knees still felt weak, although she wasn’t sure what she would have done even if she trusted herself to walk. Would she try to escape while she was alone? Would she go see who this “Daddy” was? It didn’t wind up mattering, either, because just a few moments later, she heard footsteps coming toward her door, and the doll’s voice chattering, “I don’t know what she was doing! She made me leave, and she was being all weird, rubbing her diaper… It looked kind of naughty!” Phoebe looked around the room desperately, already embarrassed, knowing she was about to get caught by Daddy, whatever that wound up being.

“I’m glad you told me,” said an unfamiliar male voice. “You’re even more mature than I thought! You’re such a good girl, even if your sister isn’t!”

Phoebe couldn’t help but gasp as he stepped into the room, followed closely by the tattletale who had just set her up. She was expecting another doll, but this person was just as human as her. He was a tall, wiry man with glasses and disheveled hair, someone rather unremarkable. She could have passed him on the street a thousand times and never noticed him.

“Who are you?” Phoebe managed to say after a few moments, trying to crawl away as the man advanced on her, only to remember she was already against a wall.

“She’s just being silly because she knows she was being naughty,” the man said as he bent down, echoing the mother’s actions from earlier and pushing a pair of fingers into her diaper. Only this time, Phoebe knew there was something inside, and her cheeks burned bright red as this stranger found it. “And you were, weren’t you? What a sticky baby you are… Looks like I chose correctly after all. I’m glad you’re enjoying your new life, baby, but this is not acceptable.”

“N-No, I didn’t!” she wailed, shivering as he ran his fingers along the inside of her diaper to find a clean spot to wipe them off before pulling them out. He smiled condescendingly at her, pulling a small tablet, a sticker that read “Peltzer Industries” on the back, out of his coat pocket and pressing a few things on the screen. A moment later, Phoebe let out a shriek as she saw the teddy-spider from her dream skittering out of her closet along the ceiling before dropping down right in front of her. In its bear hands, it was holding a pair of her socks, which it began to eat as it crawled onto her. “Get off!” she screamed, trying in vain to fling it off, eyes widening as she watched it climb onto her arm, turning around as it began to produce thread from its backside, the last set of its legs grabbing it and weaving it around her wrist, forming a tight, stiff mitten as she watched in horror. She tried to reach over and pull the monster off of her, just in time for another one of its kind to hop onto that arm and start its work there, this one made out of a stuffed bunny her first boyfriend had given to her.

“Wet baby,” the doll giggled. Phoebe looked up at it, then down at her diaper in horror, realizing only then that she was, indeed, in the midst of wetting herself.

“Yes, she is,” the man confirmed, pressing his hand to the outside of Phoebe’s diaper. “Now that you can do all you want, baby doll.”

“I-I’m not a baby!” Phoebe whimpered. “You can’t do this to me!”

“Aren’t you?” the man asked, looking around. “You’ve progressed much further than I ever would have expected in so short a time! I wasn’t expecting this phase to finish this early, but I guess it’s an early Christmas present for me.”

“I’m not anybody’s present!” Phoebe glared at him, shivering as the spider toys crawled off of her, their job done.

“Oh, but you are,” he countered. “I knew the moment I saw you walk into this building that you would be perfect for the first of my dolls. That little bottom of yours looked just right for diapers, and for the many spankings I’ve been told you already earned yourself. Honestly, you can’t tell me you weren’t trying to get those, not with as many as you’ve gotten! Especially after I just caught you masturbating in your diapers! And just think about how fast you broke the rules!”

“The rules?” Phoebe blinked.

“Yes, the rules! The ones that came with your little dolly! If you had just followed them, I would have known that you were a responsible, mature adult like you were trying to act like, but you broke them all in the first day! Frankly, I was surprised that everything was able to respond so quickly! I didn’t expect my little helpers to have to build the dollhouse for you so soon, but they’ve done a fantastic job, haven’t they?”

“D-Dollhouse?” Phoebe looked around at the place that used to be her apartment, remembering how drastically everything else on this floor, at least, had been changed. “You did all this?”

“Not me,” the man laughed, hitting something else on his tablet. A moment later, she heard a quiet buzzing, and suddenly a hole opened near the floor of her wall. A toy robot on tank treads rolled in, stopping in front of the man. “Good boy,” he told it, then pressed another button, sending it back into the wall, which it quickly patched up, as if the hole had never been there. “They’re very good, aren’t they? Not to toot my own horn, of course, but they work even better than I imagined.”

“But how?” Phoebe shook her head.

“It was all you. I moved the big dolls in next door once I found out where you were living. I seeded your dolly with the materials to build all my other little helpers, though, but you were the one who had to break the rules for her to be able to release them, to make sure they didn’t get out of control and tip you off that something was wrong before you were ready. And you did that splendidly! Really, I couldn’t ask for a better test case!”

“No, I’m not!” Phoebe whined. “I don’t want to be here! Let me go!”

“Look, I know this whole thing is scary, but I promise, it will be okay. The big dolls are a little creepy, I know, but I’m working on them. And if I could find the perfect baby doll, I know I’ll be able to find a cheerleader and a mother, and then I’ll bring them here to keep you company!” He knelt down in front of her again, tapping her nose. “Won’t that be fun?”

“You didn’t make this place for me,” Phoebe realized with disgust. “This is for you! You’re making some kind of… creepy, private harem or something. Ugh, how do you even think you’ll get away with this? What is wrong with you?!”

He bent a little closer to her, just as she’d hoped. “You know, I had hoped I’d have a little more time to develop the big dolls, but I think yours will work for now. After Christmas, she can call your boss and explain that she’s developed chronic migraines. She can tele-commute for a little while, and stay out of harsh light, until I get everything perfected.” He caught Phoebe’s hand as it tried to reach into his coat pocket, smiling as she attempted to yank it free, pushing it aside and taking it out himself. “What did you think you were going to accomplish? Did you forget about your nice, new mittens? Even if you didn’t have those, sweetie, the execute command is locked to my fingerprint. You are mine, little baby!”

“You’re not going to get away with this!” Phoebe fumed. “Nobody is going to believe that stupid doll is me!”

“Not yet,” the man nodded, “but that’s easy enough to fix! All we have to do is finish the link between the two of you, and she’ll have access to your memories. On the other side of a phone, or a video chat, I think she’ll do the trick. What do you think?”

The man stepped aside, giving Phoebe a clear view of the doll. The spider toys were making their way down its legs, weaving a set of pantyhose and heels as they went, before scurrying back into the closet, leaving behind… her. It looked just like she had, back before this whole mess had begun, in a tight skirt and matching blazer, her hair in a tight ponytail. If it weren’t for the plastic skin, the too-stiff fingers, the not-quite-right eyes, Phoebe could have believed she was looking into a mirror, albeit one that showed the past.

Phoebe knew right away something was wrong, even before her eyes fully opened. The large bulk between her legs wasn’t too surprising, since the cheerleader had insisted on putting the nighttime diaper on her before putting her to bed far too early – not that Phoebe hadn’t fallen asleep much faster than she liked to admit. She had planned on just faking it, as the girl also decided she was going to stay and watch her until she drifted off, but it hadn’t quite worked out that way.

And, from the way things felt inside that thick padding, that wasn’t the only thing that hadn’t gone according to plan. She gasped, prodding at the diaper, hardly able to believe the cool, clammy sensation inside it, much less the thought that it had come from her. She squirmed in her bed, whimpering, her still-full bladder telling her that it could get much worse.

She had to get out of there; there was no question about that. Her whole body seemed to ache, between the cramps in her hands from all the writing she’d been forced to do, to the ache in her backside from the spanking she’d earned from wetting herself. The girl had been watching her like a hawk the whole time, all too happy to provide her with water to drink, letting her up only long enough to go to the kitchen where the girl could keep an eye on her while making her a lunch of peanut butter and jelly and a banana. Phoebe had begged to be allowed to go to the bathroom, but all she’d gotten was a smack on the hand with the spoon for pausing in her line-writing. She had known the very moment Phoebe had lost control and wet herself, no doubt, since her pleas halted only then, and quite abruptly, but she’d still made a show of checking her Pull-Ups and scolding her, telling her how disappointed she was in her.

She’d been sent to get washed up again, and made to come back to the living room, completely naked, for her spanking. After the degradation of peeing herself in front of the girl, twice, that hardly even registered, and Phoebe had mostly just been glad to be done with the lines, which took much longer to complete than she would have thought. Of course, once the spanking actually began, she thought differently, as the girl was even rougher than her mother, and had Phoebe bawling and thrashing helplessly in a matter of minutes. Then, because she’d been so naughty, Phoebe was taped into her nighttime diaper and put to bed without supper, while her doll toddled along beside the other two, watching with what could almost be termed curiousity, were it not a toy.

And now she’d wet herself yet again, in her sleep. There had to be something wrong with her; that was the only explanation. There was no way all this could be normal, or even real. Perhaps the doll had been coated in some sort of hallucinogen. Everything so far had felt real, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. So did dreams, until you wake up.

She rolled over, eager to get out of this diaper before she had any visitors, only to run into something at the side of her bed. Confused, she tapped it with her foot again, then looked over at it, stomach dropping as she saw a set of rails there, not unlike the ones on her doll’s bed. “Those bitches,” she growled, shaking her head and getting up onto her knees. That crazy mother and daughter had to have done this, though she couldn’t quite fathom why. What was the point? Of course, nothing they did seemed to make sense, so she wasn’t sure why she expected this to be any different.

Well, unlike her doll, she was fully capable of climbing over a set of rails, she told herself, carefully standing up on her bed, then reaching out to grab the top of the rail to help steady herself as she stepped over… Only to get knocked back onto her bed as a powerful shock raced through her body. She gasped, trying to catch her breath, blushing as she felt her bladder let go, flooding her already wet diaper. It had been quite wet before, but now it was soaked, and while it did feel warmer, it was also much squishier, the padding much lumpier and even less comfortable.

She laid there for a few minutes, too stunned to even try to work out another plan, though, as she regained her breath, her brain began working again, and she was able to remind herself that there had to be latches of some kind on the rails. They could be electrified, too, though… And the rails were just high enough she she knew she couldn’t get over it without touching the top. Maybe she had been wrong, and she really was trapped in her bed after all.

Somewhat luckily, her door opened just a few minutes later, admitting the silhouette of the mother from next door, just enough light coming from the nightlight Phoebe hadn’t even noticed plugged into her wall to illuminate her pearl necklace and bright white teeth. “Good morning!” she chirped, reaching between the bars and patting Phoebe’s diaper with a still-gloved hand. “Dear me, someone had a very wet night, didn’t she?” Before Phoebe could respond, or see exactly what she’d done, the woman had done something to the outside of the rail and lifted it off. “We’d better get you into a fresh one!”

“What? No!” Phoebe shook her head, growing more desperate as she saw the woman walk to her dresser and take out another diaper. “No, please, not another diaper! I have to get to work!”

“Don’t be silly!” the woman chuckled, returning to the bed with the diapering supplies and starting her work. “I know you like to play office, and it’s sweet that you want to be like your daddy and have a job, but you still have to wear your diapie! I heard about your little adventure with real panties yesterday, and that didn’t end well, did it?”

Phoebe blushed while the woman untaped her diaper and set to work wiping her clean and dry. “B-But that was… It wasn’t my fault! Can’t I at least wear the Pull-Ups?”

“Sweetie, no,” the woman’s voice turned a little more stern. “I know you want to prove you’re more mature than your sister, but neither of you is ready. Besides, you’re only older than her by a couple minutes! You don’t have to feel bad that you aren’t taking the lead with your potty training!”

Phoebe’s blood ran cold. “What? No, I’m older than that!” It had to be their plan, to disorient her, and they were doing a good job. Just a couple nights ago, they’d insisted she was the doll’s mother – now she was its twin?! They were crazy, that was all there was to it, and they were toying with her.

“You’re right,” the woman chuckled, sliding the fresh diaper under Phoebe’s red bottom, then bending over to kiss her forehead. “Four is more than just a ‘couple’, isn’t it? I’m sorry.” She was clearly being patronizing, which only made it more humiliating as she taped the diaper up and set Phoebe on her feet, patting her backside. “Let’s see if your sister is ready yet!”

“Can’t I put something on first?” Phoebe whined, crossing her arms over her exposed chest.

“No,” the woman told her simply. “You’d only get your breakfast all over it, and then we’d have to change you again, wouldn’t we? No need for all that!” She patted Phoebe’s bum again, and when that didn’t get the girl going, she grabbed her hand and began tugging her along to the kitchen. As they passed by her guest room, she could tell something was different, but it was hard to tell what, exactly, because the woman pulled her away too quickly. The rest of the apartment looked different as well, with far fewer boxes than she recalled scattered through her living room. It was hard to tell for sure, since, like the rest of the apartment, it was so dimly lit, but she wasn’t about to try to look closer, as the only thing she saw for sure in there was a trio of small creatures of some sort crawling quickly out of sight when they passed by.

She gasped, glad that she had just had such a huge accident in her bed, or else she would surely have had one then. She still had no idea what they were, but they were definitely not rats – she was sure she’d seen at least six legs on one of them. For once, she was almost glad the woman was there, because after seeing that, she didn’t particularly want to be alone anywhere near there.

Of course, once they got to the kitchen, she didn’t really want to be there, either. The cheerleader was waiting for them with the doll, already in her high chair and partway through her feeding. Beside her, however, sat something much worse – a second, larger high chair. “No, don’t!” she begged, even as the woman picked her up and set her in the chair, sliding the tray into place with a snap before setting a sippy cup and a bowl of oatmeal on it.

“Open wide!” was all the woman said in response, tying a bib around Phoebe’s neck and then lifting the spoon, piled high with off-white mush, to the girl’s protesting mouth. She was feeling rather hungry, after being sent to bed without supper the night before, but this wasn’t what she wanted. The stuff was thick and mostly tasteless, other than the raisins that dotted it, and quite unappealing, even before she took into account the fact that, even though her stomach was hungry, she was feeling rather full a little further down the digestive tract after not having had the chance to go the past couple days. She squirmed helplessly in the high chair, trying to turn away from the incoming “airplanes”, which just wound up spreading the paste across her face. The cheerleader laughed at her, but only for the first few times, and then she took the doll and left.

“Let me just feed mys…” she tried, which invited the woman to empty another spoon into her protesting mouth. That should have been enough to teach her to shut up, but of course she just had to try another, desperate, “I can fe…!” before she got the idea. The bowl seemed even deeper than it looked, and the oatmeal was particularly filling, so, despite missing her last meal, she was still full well before the woman was done feeding her, but her attempts to communicate that ended in the same, predictable way as her insistence that she could feed herself.

By the time she was finished, left to drain her sippy cup of apple juice while the woman took the bowl and spoon to the sink to wash it, the woman’s daughter returned with the doll, which was now dressed in an outfit Phoebe had never seen before, though it seemed to fit her little plastic body perfectly. Had she somehow missed it at the bottom of the box? She was pretty sure she’d emptied it out, though, frankly, she wasn’t sure why she was so surprised – after everything else the mother and daughter had brought to her apartment, doll clothes weren’t all that shocking. It just seemed slightly strange that they had something in her doll’s specific size.

It was quite seasonally appropriate as well, turning the doll into a little elf. It was a green dress with short, puffy sleeves, held at the waist by a wide black belt, with large, fake gold button running down the chest. The very bottom of the skirt had a stripe of red, a thin gold border separating the two colors, and there was a Peter Pan collar with the same color scheme. Underneath the rather short skirt that came perhaps halfway down the doll’s thighs was a set of red and white striped tights and a pair of little, flat-soled, black boots.

“Oh, how darling!” the mother cooed as she returned to Phoebe’s high chair with a wash cloth to clean her face, then remove her bib. “Isn’t your sister adorable? I bet you can’t wait to get your own outfit on!” she exclaimed.

“No!” Phoebe shook her head. “I have to get to work! You guys already made me miss one day!”

“She is just so cute, isn’t she?” the cheerleader asked, walking over to her and pinching her cheeks with her gloved hands. “She just loves her little games!”

“She is,” the mother approved. “Do you want to go get her changed while I finish cleaning up?”

“Sure!” The cheerleader unlatched the tray and lifted Phoebe down from the chair, taking her hand and leading her back to her bedroom. Or, at least, Phoebe thought it was her bedroom. It was in the same place as her bedroom, through the same door, and yet… Everything was different. The bed, most of its rails still in place, had a canopy now, draped in a pink that matched the new sheets, not to mention most everything else in the room. Her dresser was much shorter and repainted, her vanity set, a gorgeous, antique mahogany, had somehow been transformed into a white and pink plastic mockery of its former self.

But that was nothing compared to what she saw when the cheerleader opened her closet. The day before, she had been sure several outfits that she’d unpacked were missing, even in the brief moment she’d been able to look inside before freaking out over what she’d assumed was a rat. Now, none of her clothes were there, though the closet was still full. Now, however, the clothes that filled it looked more suited for a toddler, lots of frilly party dresses and shortalls and cartoon characters, certainly nothing she would ever dream of wearing to the office. She was almost too busy gaping at them to notice the huge spiderweb in one corner of the closet, which she was sure was just as new as all these other additions to what had used to be her room.

“What did you do?!” she demanded, managing at last to yank her wrist away from the girl’s hand. “What is wrong with you people?! This is my apartment! How dare you do all this?! You give my stuff back right now!”

“Hey!” the girl snapped, turning harshly toward Phoebe. “No shouting, young lady! You would think your daddy would have taught you better manners!”

“I want my clothes so I can get dressed, I want my phone so I can explain to my boss that I’ve been held hostage by maniacs the past couple days, and I want everyhing in here back the way it was by the time I get home from work tonight!” Phoebe stomped her foot dramatically. “I am not putting up with this anymore! This has gone way too far!”

“I think you’d better lower your voice, young lady,” the girl told her, without a hint of fear at Phoebe’s proclamations. “Mom was just telling me how she thought a nice, big enema when we get back might be what you needed to get rid of this bad mood you’ve been in lately, so you probably don’t want her to hear you.”

Phoebe glowered, folding her arms across her still bare chest, though not for long. The cheerleader easily pried them apart and lifted them up so she could still the dress over them, ignoring Phoebe’s protests, which she did quiet down a bit after that threat, although it was only while the tights were being inched up over her bulging diaper that the entire thing sunk in. “Wait, back?” she squeaked. “From where?!”

“You know, silly!” the girl said. “You have to go tell Santa what you want for Christmas!”

Phoebe’s eyes widened and her stomach churned at the idea of going out in public dressed like this. She felt certain that her dress was, proportionally, even shorter than the doll’s had been, even shorter than the cheerleading costume from the day before, and even the slightest move made the crotch of her candy cane tights visible, and it only took a peek to make it obvious what was underneath them. At the same time, however, she knew that this could be a good thing. Surely somewhere on the way to Santa, someone would realize that there was something wrong; at the very least, she could tell the guy playing Santa and hopefully get help from him. Of course, she would still have to get to him, and sit on his lap, which would be plenty humiliating on their own. But at least there was some hope now. If she was really lucky, they’d pass a police officer on the way.

“Look at how darling they look!” the mother declared, clapping her hands as Phoebe was led into the living room. Just as she’d suspected earlier, almost all of her boxes were gone, though, seemingly in their place, toys were scattered throughout the room, lots of stuffed animals and dolls that were far less mobile than the one that had started this whole mess. Her television had shrunk, and all of her furniture was gone, replaced with child-sized toy chairs instead.

“Can you be a good ‘big’ sister and hold hands with your little sister?” she asked, her tone making it obvious that she didn’t consider Phoebe and the doll to be different at all, that she was just appealing to Phoebe’s bruised pride.

Phoebe sighed, half-waddling over to the doll, still not used to the diaper’s thickness between her legs, or the crinkling that plagued her every movement, accompanied occasionally with a grumble from her stuffed stomach. She paused for a moment when she reached the toy, confused – hadn’t it been smaller before? Much smaller? – then reached out and took its plastic hand before being ushered toward her front door.

Or, rather, where her front door had used to be. That she knew for sure had been there, with no doubt in her mind. And yet, now, somehow, it was gone. As they turned the corner that should have led to it, the apartment just seemed to continue. What should have been the hallway outside was the start of another, much larger living room, complete with a much fancier, and bigger, sofa than she’d had originally, several very large, comfortable looking armchairs, and a huge Christmas tree, covered in ornaments and tinsel and twinkling merrily with what looked like every possible color of lights, giving off what seemed to be the room’s only illumination. Off in the distance there was even a fireplace, covered in red spots that Phoebe assumed were stockings, though she couldn’t see them well enough in the dark to be sure.

“What is this?” Phoebe gasped. She turned, looking toward where the mother and cheerleader’s apartment was, but that was just another hallway, like the one they’d just come out of. She could only see far enough to note an open bedroom door that had to have belonged to the cheerleader, as it looked a little more mature than her own, though still covered in posters of various boy bands and teen movies.

“Isn’t it a pretty tree?” the cheerleader asked, seeming to assume that was what had Phoebe so astounded. “Maybe next year you two can help us put ornaments on it!”

“We’ll see!” the mother chimed in. “You have to be very careful! Some of them are very fragile!”

Phoebe shook her head, distracted only momentarily by a cramp in her bowels. “B-But how is this here? It can’t be here!” she shook her head, stumbling to the couch, feeling a sudden need to sit down. Things had been strange at her apartment for a while now, but that was nothing compared to this. This was like being dropped into a whole other world.

The mother caught her before she could hoist her diapered bottom onto the sofa. “The furniture is for grown-ups,” she told Phoebe, as if it were something she’d had to tell her a hundred times. “We don’t want you leaking on it, now do we?”

Phoebe was still too stunned to protest that she was an adult, that she wasn’t going to leak. She became less sure of that, however, as she quickly turned her head, sure she saw something crawling on the wall from the corner of her eye, though there was nothing there once she was facing it. She shook her head, heart pounding, telling herself to focus on the big picture here, and where all the other apartments on this floor had gone. “What did you do?!”

“I didn’t do anything, sweetie,” the mother told her. “Why are you so fussy? You can go back to your playroom after you tell Santa what you want! Don’t you want to make sure you get the right thing? You’re almost out of time!”

Phoebe calmed herself a little, remembering that she was going to use this opportunity to escape, or at least get help, though she was clearly going to have to keep some details to herself, or people would think she was insane. “Okay,” she nodded. “Where are we going to see Santa?”

“Going?” the woman chuckled. “We’re not going anywhere! Santa is coming to us!”

Phoebe could see her hopes for getting out dwindling. “Coming here?” she whined. “But…”

Before she could continue, she saw something moving off in the fireplace, crawling out and then stretching up, pulling itself to its full, quite impressive height, something that was instantly recognizable as Santa Claus, pulling a large bag behind himself. “Ho, ho, ho!” he bellowed as he strode across the room. “Merry Christmas, children!”

The doll ran up to him excitedly, but Phoebe was a little more hesitant. He was a huge man, even taller than the mother, and, as was appropriate for his role, fairly rotund as well. He had on a traditional Santa outfit, complete with white gloves, and he looked jolly enough, but nothing in this place was ever as it seemed. He seemed to notice her caution and chuckled, setting down his sack. “No need to be afraid, child! Unless there is something you’re hiding from Santa!” Before she could respond, he had scooped her up and taken her and the doll to the nearest, largest chair, next to his bag, sitting down and placing one of them on each knee. The mother and the cheerleader cooed, hurrying to watch the show.

“Now, have you two been good girls this year?” Santa asked, turning first to the doll, who nodded, and then to Phoebe.

“Who are you?” Phoebe asked, squirming uncomfortably. It felt rather odd to be sitting on some strange man’s lap, especially dressed as she was, though he didn’t seem to mind.

Phoebe still wasn’t sure if she could trust this guy or not, but as she sat on his knee, she could see more shadowy figures racing across the ceiling and along the walls, each one making her more sure that she couldn’t be imagining all of them as her skin crawled. “You have to help me!” she hissed, crawling up a little closer to Santa’s ear. “You have to get me out of here!”

“Ho, ho!” Santa chortled. “I’m sure you’d be a big help, little elf, but they need you here to help with your sister! Now tell me, have you been a good girl?”

“Yes!” Phoebe snapped, annoyed at being asked the same thing over and over. “Just listen…”

“Have you?” he asked, growing more serious this time.

For a moment, she almost doubted herself. Was this a test of some sort? He’d only asked the doll once, but then, it was a doll. She fidgeted in her diapers, remembering back to the times when she’d been a little kid sitting on Santa’s lap, back when she still believed, and had always been just a little terrified that he would know about some naughty thing she had done earlier in the year that would make him refuse to give her presents. “Y-Yes,” she said again, some of that old insecurity creeping back.

And for good reason. Santa shook his head, setting the doll down on the floor. “Do you think you can fool me, little girl? Lying is naughty, too, you know, and particularly foolish when you’re doing it to Santa!”

Before Phoebe knew what was happening, she had been flipped onto her stomach across Santa’s lap. Almost instantly, she began to cry. “No!” she whimpered, feeling her bladder spasm slightly in fear, dampening her diaper right before it was pulled down. “No, please, not another spanking!”

“No, those don’t do much good, do they?” Santa asked. “You’re still a naughty little girl! But there is one other punishment we can try!” Santa held her firmly in place as he reached into the bag beside his chair, pulling out a hot water bottle, bulging with fullness, a tube attached. “I think this will help adjust your attitude!” he declared.

“Go get another diaper,” the mother suggested to the cheerleader.

“Aww, I wanna watch!” the girl whined.

“Go, or do you want to be next?” the woman threatened.

“But mom!” the cheerleader pouted before having a brilliant idea. “Hey, sweetie…”

Phoebe thrashed on Santa’s lap, heart racing, but Santa wasn’t in a hurry. He held her in place, letting her tire herself out before sliding the hose inside. She whined as she felt it intrude, sliding into her, and, a moment later, she let out a much louder protest as the water began to flow through it and into her. “Please, stop!” she begged. “I’m not a baby!” But that was just what she felt like as she laid there, helpless, the water slowly but surely filling her up, diaper around her knees and crinkling with every escape attempt. She groaned as she felt a cramp, already feeling uncomfortably bloated, with no idea how much was left in the bottle.

“This should do her some good!” the cheerleader declared gleefully. Phoebe could only see the legs of the girl and her mother, but she had no doubt they were both smiling as they watched the spectacle. Her position did give her a good view of the doll, however, as it toddled back into view, carrying another one of her diapers.

That was some relief, at least, she told herself, gritting her teeth. At least she was going to get changed pretty quickly after what was bound to be one of the most humiliating moments of her life. Into another diaper, sure, but it would be better than going back into the one she’d already wet. Her main worry now was getting to the toilet in time. She disliked the idea of having to waddle hurriedly back into her apartment, to the bathroom, while her stomach churned and grumbled ominously, afraid each step that she’d be too late, but she also didn’t want Santa to carry her there and plop her down on the toilet so he, and likely the mom and cheerleader, could watch.

As it turned out, however, neither of those situations were a problem. As the water finally ran out, Santa gently extracted the hose, then pulled the diaper back up over her red bottom. She closed her eyes, preparing for the mad dash to the bathroom, only to be flipped over onto her back and laid on the floor. “Thank you! What a good little girl!” he declared. Phoebe opened her eyes in confusion, just in time to see Santa take the diaper from the doll to slide under her already diapered backside.

“What are you doing?” she squeaked, squirming weakly as she watched him tear holes in the plastic lining of her diaper. Realistically, she knew the answer, but her brain couldn’t process it, even as he pulled the second diaper up between her legs, forcing them even further apart, and taped it up. “I have to go to the potty!” she wailed.

“Yes, I know!” he chuckled, patting her double-thick diaper before standing her up on her rather unsteady feet and pulling her tights back up, just barely stretching them enough to fit over the newly increased bulk of her undergarment.

“No!” she shook her head desperately, while he put her back on his knee, then grabbed the doll for his other leg. “No, not in my diapers!”

“Santa’s a busy man,” the mother reminded her harshly. “He doesn’t have time for you to try to use the potty!”

“There!” Santa declared. “I think that’s enough punishment, don’t you? Now we can declare you a good girl for the year! As long as you can be nice for the next couple days until Christmas, I think I can find room in my sleigh for a few toys for you! Now, what do you want for Christmas?”

“Messy baby!” the doll chirped in, pointing toward the red-faced Phoebe, who blushed even darker, too preoccupied with everything to process that the doll’s phrase had changed, since it sounded close enough, and like something she’d expect a doll to say.

“Ho, ho, not yet, little one! At least, I don’t think so!” Phoebe was mortified as she felt the big man tug out the back of her diapers. “No, not yet, but that won’t take until Christmas, I don’t think!”

He was definitely right about that. Phoebe stared down at her swollen stomach and her diapered crotch, now easily visible beneath her skirt no matter what she did. How long did she have? The cramps were getting worse very quickly, and all of her wiggling on his lap did very little to stop that. She was going to poop her pants, she realized, and there was very little she could do about it.

“And what do you want?” Phoebe squeaked as Santa bounced the leg she was sitting on, surprising her enough to send a wave of liquid into her diaper. She wrinkled her nose, hoping that was mostly just the water that had been piped into her, but not wanting to find out for sure.

“I want out of here!” Phoebe whimpered. “Please, just let me down!”

“There’s no need to be shy, little one!” Santa declared. “I’m Santa! I can bring you whatever you want!”

Phoebe winced as another cramp hit, forcing a little more out of her bottom, though this time she could tell there was a little more than water there. “I want my phone back!” she wailed. “I want my clothes back! I want to be an adult again! I even want to go back to work! I just want out of here!”

“Well, I think you already have a nice toy phone,” Santa said. “But I can get you some pretty dress-up clothes so you can pretend to be a grown-up! What kind of job do you want? I can get you a toy stethoscope and you can play doctor! Or…”

Phoebe gasped as another cramp wracked her body, forcing her to involuntarily give a good push, sending a huge rush of mushy mess into the seat of her diapers. She had hoped at least for some privacy, but the fact that Santa stopped talking just as she did it made her suspect that every eye was on her while she committed this most infantile act, made all the more juvenile for being on Santa’s lap while she did it. It was all so sudden and unstoppable that she almost couldn’t process that she’d actually done it, despite the squishy mass invading her pants.

At least, not until Santa gave her another knee bounce and laughed, “What a good little helper you are! Already making a nice, big present!”

Phoebe wasn’t sure if she could consider it a comfort that technically she had made it, rather than being in the process, though she supposed she should be happy to be done with it… Except that, as he continued to bounce her, spreading the mess all throughout her thick diaper, she felt her body expel another round of the stuff, filling it even further. She sniffled softly, cheeks burning.

“Messy baby!” the doll chimed in again, its voice sounding like a tattling toddler as it pointed across Santa’s lap.

“Yes, she is,” Santa agreed, patting the lumpy rear of Phoebe’s diaper. “But that’s all right! That’s what good little babies are supposed to do! And since she’s going to be a good baby now, she’ll get lots of nice presents on Christmas morning… And I’m sure she’ll be making another one then, too!”

Phoebe blushed as she thought about Christmas morning, about being brought out of her bed, diaper quite possibly soggy, and sat in front of the Christmas tree, tearing away at wrapping paper beside the doll, not even noticing her diaper expanding until she hears the cheerleader giggle and tug at the waistband. She’d probably lay her down and change her right there…

“No!” Phoebe shook her head. “No, I’m not a baby! You let me out of here! Take me with you!” she demanded, glaring up at Santa, grabbing his beard. “I don’t care who you are, just get me out of this place!” She grunted in surprise as one final load slid out, thoroughly packing her diaper as full as Santa’s bag. She hadn’t even realized there was more inside her, and, in surprise, she jerked backwards, not thinking about the beard in her hand, which came with he.

Her eyes went wide as she saw the handful of whiskers. They had felt very real, and she turned back toward Santa to apologize, surprised he hadn’t yelped in pain, at least until she saw his face, and the spot where she had gotten them from. She gasped, scooting away, falling off his lap and to the floor onto her well-padded, if quite messy, backside. She dropped the beard, noticing only then the bit of plastic the whiskers were attached to, which looked as though it would fit perfectly into the empty spot on his face. Without it there, she could see inside his head, and it was empty, a plastic shell covering nothing. She felt her bladder empty itself as she scrambled backwards, confused and terrified.

“Wh-What are you?!” she stammered.

Santa set the doll down on the floor, then stood, towering over Phoebe. “That was a very naughty thing to do, little girl!”

Frantically, Phoebe got to her feet and took off running, though she wasn’t sure where she was planning to go. The cheerleader leapt in front of her, stopping her for a moment, but Phoebe could see her coming, and had just enough warning to ready a kick to the teen’s shin. Her boot connected, then sank into the girl’s ‘skin’, leaving a dent. Her stomach dropped as she stared at it, but she forced herself not to think about it and keep going, driving forward into the darkness, away from the Christmas tree.

As she ran – at least as fast as her loaded double diaper would allow her to – she tried to get her bearings, to figure out where the elevator should be. In the darkness, it was even harder to figure out, as she stumbled over things she couldn’t see, felt strange things brushing against her legs and tried not to think about what she’d seen crawling around the walls as she sat on Santa’s lap. It took her a few frantic moments to realize that it had to be where the fireplace was now, enough time for the mother to order the others to “Find her!”

Phoebe took that as a signal that she was safe for the moment and paused, trying to catch her breath and formulate a plan. All she had to do was make it to the fireplace without being seen. That shouldn’t be too hard, right? She tried to keep her panting quiet, tried to keep from thinking too hard about what she’d just seen. If she was careful, she could get away, and then she’d never have to think about it again. She’d go to another apartment building, beg someone to let her use a phone, and call her mom to come pick her up and get her out of this crazy city.

What she didn’t take into account, however, was that the darkness didn’t seem to bother the things. They’d gotten around in it just fine until then, so, as she considered it later, she wasn’t sure why she had thought she could hide in it. Sure enough, as she prepared herself to make a dash for the fireplace, she felt herself get picked up. “Let me go!” she insisted.

“Somebody’s been a naughty girl!” Santa’s voice boomed in her ear as he carried her back toward the Christmas tree. “I think you’re getting coal this year!”

Phoebe struggled futilely against his strong arms, but she couldn’t stop him from taking her back to the chair and flipping her over his knee yet again. This time, however, he didn’t hesitate to spank her, right across her messy diaper. If there was any spot under her diaper that wasn’t already coated in the muck from his knee bouncing, he made sure to get it as he spanked her, his large hands strong enough to ensure that, even through the two diapers, it still stung.

By the time he was finished and handed her off to the mother, she felt every inch the chastised little girl they were trying to make her, bottom spanked yet again, and encased in a very full diaper, surrounded by people – or, rather, things – much bigger and stronger than her. The mother picked her up and carried her back into the place her apartment had once been, followed close behind by the cheerleader and the dolly, all of whom crowded into the bathroom, the cheerleader going off in one corner to scowl at her dented leg. There was plenty of space, seeing as the toilet had vanished, leaving just a bathtub and a sink, both of which looked bigger than usual.

Phoebe flailed desperately, trying to get away as the mother began stripping the clothes off of her, one hand accidently hitting the light switch. Phoebe gasped as she finally saw her two captors in full light, seeing now why they had chosen to keep things so dark for so long. In dim light, when she could see only parts of them at once, they looked real enough, but now she could see that they were no more-so than the dolly. Their skin had an unnatural, plasticky sheen to it, and as the mother undressed her, Phoebe could see that her movements were strangely stiff beneath those gloves. Their eyes looked real enough, which made the whole effect even creepier, and their mouth twitched and moved with a hint of realism, but they were off just enough that, now that she could see them, she had no doubt they were just bigger version of her Christmas “present”.

“Please let me go!” she begged as the mother plopped her into the bath and began to wash her, while the cheerleader pressed on the sides of her leg, popping the dent back out. “Please, I don’t belong here!” But they didn’t say anything else as they finished their work, cleaning her up and then taking her to her room and diapering her on the newly-appeared changing table before putting her into bed. “Please, I’m not a baby! Let me out of here!” she cried, only to be silenced as the mother snapped the rail into place, and she drifted instantly off to sleep.

Phoebe rolled out of bed with a yawn, shivering a little as the chilly morning air hit her mostly bare skin. She really wished she had found some more substantial pajamas to wear now, but clearly it was too late for that now. She was definitely going to be doing that when she got home from work, though, at least if the super wound up telling her to move instead of kicking the crazy woman next door out.

She walked over to her closet, flipping through her clothes, looking for something cute to wear to work, feeling rather disappointed that she apparently hadn’t unpacked nearly as much as she’d thought. She barely even noticed the thing on the floor, her mind telling her it was just a pile of shoes or something, until it skittered away suddenly. She let out a loud shriek, stumbling backward, putting a hand to her chest. What was that? It had moved like an insect, and she could have sworn it had way more than four legs, but it had been way too big for that… Or at least she hoped so. It had to be a rat, she surmised, which was hardly any better. The super had never mentioned anything to her about rats! She supposed she should have considered it, but still… Maybe it would be better to just move out completely, she thought. Not that there had been anything else nearby she could afford.

She shivered at the thought, suddenly wanting nothing to do with her closet. She obviously wasn’t going to work dressed as she was, but she could at least put off getting dressed a couple minutes while she got some coffee. That would warm her up. Disgusted, she hurried down the hall, wishing she had at least grabbed her slippers from the closet, turning the corner into the kitchen, only to be met with another surprise.

The blinds were drawn, letting in only a few slivers of light, but it was enough for her to see a teenaged girl sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in a cheerleading uniform, casually looking at the screen of a phone that looked an awful lot like Phoebe’s. She looked up as Phoebe gave a shocked shriek and giggled. “Good morning, sleepyhead!” the girl said, getting up from the table. “I thought for a minute you were planning on sleeping all day! I know school is out for Christmas, but you still have to babysit your little sister!”

“G-Get out of here!” Phoebe demanded. “Who the hell are you?!”

“My, my,” the girl chuckled, walking up to Phoebe and starting to circle around her. “I thought my mother said she’d fixed your attitude problem last night. Yep, look at how red your little thighs are under your jammies!” She gave Phoebe’s tender backside a good smack, earning a second gasp from her – the first having come when Phoebe realized this was the woman from last night’s daughter – then stepped back in front of her, grabbing her by the chin and squeezing her cheeks to make Phoebe open her mouth. Even in the midst of the strange assault, Phoebe couldn’t help noticing that the girl was wearing gloves, too, just like her mother, and that her hands felt strangely strong beneath them. “She told me she washed your mouth out, too, but if you’re using language like that, I guess she didn’t do a very good job, did she?”

“I’d love to,” the girl rolled her eyes. “Do you think I want to spend a second of my Christmas break with a little geek like you? But my mother told me I had to come and make sure you had the slightest idea of what it took to be a babysitter. And, frankly, I’m kind of doubting that. Where is your little sister?”

“Little sister?” Phoebe shook her head. “I thought she said it was my daughter.”

“Daughter?!” That struck the girl as especially funny. “No wonder you failed sex ed! You have to have sex to have a daughter, silly, and everyone in school knows you’re still a virgin!”

Phoebe wasn’t even sure where to start responding to that, so she just stood there, flustered, for a few seconds. “I know she’s not my daughter!” was what she landed on finally. “It was your stupid mother who said that! It’s just a doll!”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” the girl cut her off. “She’s a little doll. Now where is she?”

“That’s not what I meant! And I am not still in school, and I’m definitely not… Where are you going?!” When she had failed to answer the question, the girl had walked around her, heading further into her apartment. Phoebe looked back at the coffee maker desperately, then hurried after the girl, not wanting her wandering around her home unattended.

The girl spotted the closed door of the guest room and let herself in, with Phoebe following close behind, confused when she saw that the boxes she’d put in front of the door had been moved. In fact, it liked like there were quite a few less boxes in there than she remembered, almost making her wonder if she’d dreamed trying to block the door. It was painfully obvious that the whole night hadn’t been a dream, though it did feel like it.

That feeling hadn’t ended the night before, either. The room was dark, even more than it had been the night before, a heavy pink curtain blocking out most of the sunlight. She had never seen it before, and she was pretty sure the doll’s bed looked bigger now as well, crazy as that sounded. The doll toddled up to her, past the cheerleader, with an enthusiastic, “Hungry, mama!”

“Aww, isn’t that sweet?” the girl said. “She thinks you’re her mama, too! I guess you spend a lot of time together, huh? I guess you’d better get her fed!”

Phoebe put a hand to her head, which was beginning to ache almost as much as her other end. What had she done to deserve all this? “Listen, I already told your mother, I want you people to leave me alone! I will call the police, I swear!”

“Your mommy and daddy let you have a phone? Wow! I guess you are getting all grown up, aren’t you?” the girl teased, as if she were talking to someone her own age, maybe a little younger, certainly not someone older than her, an adult.

“It is way too early to deal with this,” Phoebe grumbled. “I’m going to make myself some coffee, and by the time it’s finished, I want you out of my apartment.”

“Coffee?! You don’t want that! It’ll stunt your growth, and you don’t want that, do you, shrimp?” Phoebe glowered at her – she had never considered herself tall, exactly, and she had looked it up and found that she was pretty much average height, even if this family beside her was freakishly tall. “I think you need some milk! Come on, bring your little sister, and I’ll get you a nice, big glass while you feed her.”

“I am not feeding anything,” Phoebe informed the girl. “I am getting my phone right now.” She turned and stomped her way out of the room to the kitchen, where she’d dumped her purse the night before. She opened it up, reached in for her phone, and came out with a plastic toy, one that looked like a smartphone, but clearly was not. It was made out of cheap plastic, the “apps” just still pictures that, when she pressed them, began making silly noises or singing her the ABCs. It was only as she stared down at the infantile thing that she remembered the girl had been holding a phone when she came in, and she’d thought about how similar to her own it looked.

“Is that your phone?” the girl asked, just as Phoebe turned around. “That looks about right for you!” Before Phoebe could respond, she shoved the doll into her arms. “Why don’t you get her set up in her high chair, and I’ll get you a bottle and some food?”

“No!” Phoebe shook her head. “How about you stop playing around and give me my damn phone? This isn’t funny!”

The girl turned to look at her. “That mouth soaping really didn’t do much good, did it? Maybe I should take you next door for a second round. I’m sure she’d be happy to help.”

“Give me my phone!” Phoebe insisted, stomping her foot, realizing only then that she was still holding the doll, which likely made her look like a little girl in the midst of a tantrum, so she clumsily tossed it aside.

“That’s why you can’t have a real phone!” the girl said. “If you can’t even hold on to your baby sis, how can your mommy and daddy trust you with a phone?”

“She is not my sister, she is a doll! A doll! God!” She kicked the thing across the kitchen floor as it got to its feet, and before she knew what was happening, the cheerleader had grabbed her, picked her up with surprising strength, and plopped her stomach across the kitchen island. Her feet couldn’t quite reach the floor, and, much like the night before, her backside was completely exposed – even more as she felt the cool morning air on her skin back there, and realized the daughter had done what the mother had threatened and bared her bottom. “No!” she shrieked, realizing what was in store for her, again. “You can’t do this! You’re a kid! I am an adult! You let me down right now!”

She gulped, protests cut short as she felt the girl’s gloved hand rub a circle around her red rump. “She did quite a number on you, didn’t she? But not good enough. You are the worst babysitter I’ve ever seen. We have a lot of work to do! Your problem is, you’re still just a selfish little brat yourself, but you have to grow up a little to take care of a kid.”

Phoebe had no idea why these people were so obsessed with the idea of her taking care of that doll, but obviously that was what they wanted, and if it saved her another spanking, she was going to give it to them. “Okay, okay, I will! I’ll feed her, though I don’t have a high chair! Please, just don’t do this!”

“Don’t have a high chair?” the girl chuckled. “You are so silly sometimes! Of course you do! How else would you feed your little sister?”

“I don’t!” Phoebe insisted, until the girl turned her head toward the kitchen table. It was still dark over there, but in the shadows, she definitely did see that one of the chairs looked a bit bigger than the others, with what looked like a tray. “Wh.. But… You brought that!”

“Wow!” the girl giggled. “I knew you were ditzy, but I had no idea how bad it was! No wonder you’re flunking all your classes!”

“I’m not!” Phoebe growled, annoyed at this weird game almost as much as the one where they pretended the doll was real. “I’m not even in school!”

“Oh, did they decide to pull you out already so you could repeat the grade next fall? Good choice! Maybe I can tutor you. Won’t that be fun? Everyone thinks you’re a nerd because you’re so awkward, but aren’t nerds supposed to be smart? You always said that cheerleaders are airhead bimbos… How is it going to look when one of them has to tutor you so you have a prayer of passing even one of your classes? Oh, you can’t hide it – I know you’re excited to get to hang out with me! The only reason you insulted us cheerleaders is because you’re jealous, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ll let you come to our practices! You can sit on the field and work, and watch us do things you aren’t smart or coordinated enough to pull off yourself. Maybe we’ll even get you your own little uniform, and you can be our mascot! That’s almost as good as being on the squad! At least… It’s as close as you’re going to get!”

“I do not want to be a cheerleader!” Phoebe insisted, squirming on the counter. “I want you to let me up, give me my phone, and get the hell out of my apartment!”

“What’s wrong?” the girl teased. “Are you afraid of a little bare-bottom spanking?” Phoebe nodded quickly. “All right, you big baby,” the cheerleader said, and, much to Phoebe’s surprise, she felt her clothes being tugged back into place. The girl didn’t help her down, however, and, instead, Phoebe heard her unfold the top of a box and begin rummaging through it. “There we go! First try!” Before Phoebe could ask what she’d found, she walked around the front of the island, holding Phoebe’s biggest wooden spoon in front of her.

“No!” Phoebe gasped.

“Yes!” the cheerleader responded playfully. “You didn’t want a bare-bottom spanking, so I covered your cute little tushy up! But you still deserve a good spanking…”

Phoebe whimpered as she watched the girl tapping the spoon against her hand. It would be bad enough going into work as she was now – at the thought, she looked desperately up at her clock and realized she needed to get this little brat out of there pretty soon if she wanted a chance of not being late – but a second, likely even worse, round of spanking would keep her from being able to sit still for a week, she was sure! Part of that week would contain Christmas, so she wouldn’t have to worry about it then, but most of the rest of the time it would be a pretty big problem.

“Please, I know this is fun for you in some weird way, but I have to start getting ready to go to work! Just let me go, and I promise, I won’t call the cops, okay? You can even come over and help me learn to babysit or whatever when I get home!” Phoebe had no intention of any of that, since her office had its own phone, but if that was what it took to get rid of the girl, and hopefully her mother, she would say whatever she needed to.

“What a silly goose! You don’t go to work! You’re still in school, and you’re not even really in that! Even if it wasn’t Christmas break, you’ve already failed everything, haven’t you? There’s no point in you going back! Even if they sent you back a grade, I bet you’d still have trouble! When was the last grade where you could actually do your work well? Was it third grade? First? Preschool?” The girl grinned down at her before starting to circle back around behind her.

Phoebe whined, trying to wriggle her way off of her counter, only for the girl to pin her in place with one strong hand. Phoebe regretted a lot of things – moving here in the first place, not calling the police or at least the super the night before, not making sure her front door was locked before going to bed – but at the moment, the biggest one was not stopping by the bathroom on her way to get her coffee started. Her bladder had been feeling quite full, but she hadn’t even considered a pit stop, because she knew it would only take a second to get the machine started, and then she could go in peace, knowing that it would be almost ready by the time she was done. Now, she hadn’t done either, but the longer she squirmed in place, edge of the counter digging into her stomach, growing more terrified with each passing second, the more she worried that one of those goals was about to accomplish itself.

Sure enough, she barely had time to say, “Wait, I..!” before she heard, and, more importantly, felt, the spoon thwack against her ass. Her legs gave an involuntary kick, but, far worse, she felt her overtaxed bladder spasm as the pain shot through her body. A rush of warm urine gushed out into her thin panties, which she felt soak almost instantly as she tried desperately to stop the flow. She managed it, but all she could think about was whether that accident would be visible to her tormentor, standing back there with her spoon. For a long moment, she thought that maybe it wasn’t as bad as she thought, though she worried about what would happen with the next strike, and the one after that, and then, to her horror, she heard a laugh.

“Did you even make it through preschool all right? Because obviously you can’t even handle potty training!” the girl mocked, setting down the spoon, much to Phoebe’s relief, and picking her up, setting her down on the floor. Phoebe had never felt shorter, standing there, staring down at her feet in front of the towering teen, horrified to see the wet spot on the crotch of her pajamas. “Or are you just that scared of me? Is that it?” The girl surprised Phoebe by darting forward, tickling her stomach. Phoebe wasn’t usually all that ticklish, but she hadn’t been expecting it, and she was already working hard to put her bladder back in check, so she couldn’t help letting out a startled laugh, and a little something else. Her laughter turned to a horrified squeal as she pressed her hands to her crotch, fighting to stop the second round even as she felt the wetness begin to run down her legs. “You are!” the girl declared happily. “Oh, how precious! I guess we’ll have to add a little diaper to your cheerleading uniform when you come visit me for tutoring! I mean, if one cheerleader does this to you, just imagine how you’d react with a whole squad! Don’t worry, we all love babies – I’m sure they’d love to check your diaper, and even change you, right there on the field!”

“I don’t need diapers!” Phoebe insisted desperately, almost more like she was trying to convince herself than the girl.

The girl patted her on the head. “Of course you don’t. Now, I think we’ve made your poor little sister wait long enough. Go wash your hands and I’ll get her meal ready.” The girl turned to do just that, but when Phoebe started a mad dash to the bathroom, she was back on her in an instant. “You are just asking for a spanking, aren’t you?”

“Can’t I go to the bathroom first?!” Phoebe wailed.

“It looks like you already are,” the girl sneered. “Besides, as a babysitter, you have to learn to put the kids first. I’m sure you can hold it long enough to get her fed. I saw your little panties, and obviously your mommy think so, anyway. She doesn’t even have you in Pull-Ups!”

The girl shook her head, tugging Phoebe over to the sink and starting up the water. She grabbed the soap – even though it was liquid, Phoebe still had a brief flashback of the night before – and squeezed some into Phoebe’s palm, then rubbed Phoebe’s hands together for her before holding them under the water. “I can wash my hands myself!” Phoebe blushed.

“You weren’t doing it,” the girl shook her head, taking a towel and drying Phoebe’s hands off. “You might as well see how this is done, anyway.” The doll’s bottle and bowl were sitting next to the sink, and the girl filled them both with water. She then took a package from beside the bowl and ripped it open, sprinkling its contents into the bowl, then stirring it up with the little plastic spoon. The water looked like it might have thickened just slightly, but mostly it seemed to color it brown. “Go put your sister in her chair. I don’t know if I can trust you to carry these without spilling.”

“I really hafta go!” Phoebe was practically bouncing in place now, her two little accidents having done nothing to stop the growing pressure in her bladder. Instead, they only seemed to make it worse. She reached out, trying to push her hands between her legs again, but the girl smacked them away.

“I just washed your hands, young lady! Now, you hold it until your sister is nice and full, or you’ll be sorry! Do you understand?” Phoebe had little choice but to nod, even as she felt a few more drops dribble their way into her panties.

Luckily for her, the doll was waiting for her beside her feet with a, “Hungry, mama!”, raising its arms for Phoebe to bend down and pick it up. Phoebe groaned as the action encouraged her body to let a little more pee loose, and hurried to get the doll to its chair, snapping the tray into place. She didn’t worry too much about where the chair had come from, though the girl or her mother had to have brought it. The girl set the bowl and bottle down on the tray, and Phoebe quickly grabbed the latter and shoved it into the doll’s mouth.

She almost thought she had a chance as she watched the doll drink, even as she felt slightly disgusted watching its far too realistic looking mouth work. It seemed very eager to drink its bottle, and she was happy to oblige, glad to be halfway done as she pulled the thing free and began scooping up the colored water in the bowl. She didn’t even get the first spoonful to the doll’s mouth before it said, “Wet, mama!”

“Of course you are,” Phoebe said under her breath, rolling her eyes. “Just eat this!” As the spoon approached, the doll’s mouth opened wider, and she slipped the spoon inside, dumping its contents down the doll’s “throat”. It took much longer than the bottle, because she either had to take very little at a time to keep from spilling it, or move very slowly for the same reason. She’d only gotten a few spoonfuls in when she saw the bottle being set back down on the tray, having been too busy with her task to notice it being taken in the first place. “That’s not fair!” she pouted.

“Didn’t you see how thirsty she was?” the girl asked. “Besides, she needs something to wash her food down! Don’t be a brat!”

Phoebe grumbled, squirming desperately in place. She’d already had far more of an accident than she had in years, but it was growing increasingly obvious that it was only going to get worse. The cheerleader was looming over her now, ensuring she couldn’t make it to the bathroom, and the doll was yapping, “Wet, mama!” between every bite, to the point where it almost began to feel more like a suggestion than a cry for help. Phoebe was determined not to do it, not to pee herself while she played with her doll, like a little girl who got too distracted playing house, but she knew it was already too late, even before she felt her already overflowing panties get deluged one final time. She stood there, hand frozen in mid-stir in the bowl, as her bladder betrayed her, emtpying itself completely while she stood there, mortified.

“Mama wet,” the doll said one more time, and this time Phoebe could have sworn the thing sounded like it was merely stating a fact.

“Oh, my God!” the girl giggled, watching the liquid pour down Phoebe’s legs, into a puddle beneath her. “What a baby! You know your little sister is going to remember this forever, don’t you? When it’s time to potty train her, she’s going to ask your mommy why she has to learn to use the potty when her big sissy can’t! Oh, this is too funny!”

Phoebe’s cheeks were burning as bright as Rudolph’s nose. “Can I go change now?” she whimpered.

“No! You have to finish feeding the baby, silly! Come on, you’re getting there!” So, as the urine in her pants and on her legs began to cool, Phoebe continued to feed he doll, feeling more ridiculous with every spoon she emptied into its mouth. She was so glad to finally be back on the bottle that she didn’t care how much slower it drank this time.

“Messy, mama!” the doll cried as soon as she took the bottle away.

“Can I go change now?” Phoebe begged the cheerleader, wanting out of the cold and clammy pajamas desperately.

“You should really change your little sister first. She can’t help her accidents, but you should be old enough to, shouldn’t you? So they’re your fault.”

“Whatever you say, drippy drawers. I’m just saying, maybe you should change the baby first. You don’t have to listen to me; I’m just the more experienced babysitter.” Phoebe glared at her, trying to figure out if this was a trick, but she was too disgusted by what she’d done – been forced to do – to care. She stomped off across the apartment, heading for her room. She didn’t make it, though, the girl grabbing her arm and yanking her to a stop right in front of the bathroom door, pushing her inside. “You get yourself cleaned up,” she instructed. “I’ll bring you some clothes.”

“I need to get dressed for work,” Phoebe pointed out to the girl. “I have to…”

“This isn’t time to play make-believe. Just get washed up,” the cheerleader told her, closing the door. Phoebe had no idea what time it was, but she had a bad feeling she was going to be late, and if she had to change her clothes again after getting dressed in whatever the girl picked for her, that would only make things worse.

Still, it felt very nice to get clean after her accident, and drying off when she was done felt even better. She was just about to wrap herself in her towel to head out when the bathroom door burst open and the girl walked in, prompting Phoebe to desperately try to cover her bare body. “Here we go! I found you the perfect outfit! I knew you wanted to be a cheerleader! What is this, a Halloween costume?”

Phoebe blushed as the girl held up a cheerleading uniform, one that looked somewhat similar to the girl’s own, except pink instead of blue, one piece instead of two, and a little shorter. “That’s not mine!” Phoebe insisted.

“Well, it was in your closet,” the girl told her. “And look what I found in your dresser… I had a feeling you had your little accident just a little too easily! I bet your mommy’ll be mad when I tell her you were in your big girl panties, won’t she?” Phoebe stared, dumbfounded, as the girl held up what looked exactly like a large pair of Pull-Ups, just like she’d seen in commercials, except in her size.

“That is definitely not mine!” Phoebe gasped.

“Oh, no?” the girl smirked, grabbing Phoebe and pulling her, towel quickly falling from its precariously tucked position and leaving her completely naked, to her bedroom, where the top drawer of her dresser was open. Off in one corner was some of the underwear Phoebe remembered unpacking, but most of the drawer was taken up by rows of Pull-Ups, except for one side, which held something even worse, that the cheerleader was all too happy to pick up, dropping her chosen outfit for Phoebe onto her bed. “I bet these aren’t yours, either,” she said, holding the thick, overnight diaper up in front of Phoebe’s face. “I bet your mommy will be especially mad when she hears you were in your PJs without your protection! You could have ruined your mattress, you bad little girl!”

“I don’t need protection! I don’t wet the bed!” Phoebe insisted.

“Sure you don’t!” the girl giggled. “Just like you don’t pee your pants! Now come on, into your training panties!” She grabbed the Pull-Ups from the bed and spread them out, kneeling down in front of Phoebe’s feet. “Come on, step in!”

“No!” Phoebe shook her head. “No, I’m not letting you do this! Those aren’t mine, and I know it!”

“Then why are they in your room?” the girl asked. “And even if they aren’t, I think you’ve earned them. Now get in, or I’ll go get the spoon again.”

“This isn’t fair!” Phoebe whined, defiantly keeping her feet planted on the floor, until the girl began to count.

“One… Two… Two and a half…” she chanted ominously.

Phoebe tried to resist, but she was sure this little brat would be all too willing to go through with her threat, so, sulking, she lifted her foot, letting the girl slide the humiliating garment onto it. “Good girl!” she was praised, and it was repeated when she raised her other foot. After that, it only took a few seconds for the girl to pull the padded underwear up, and one final, crinkly pat to confirm that she was, indeed, dressed like a toddler. The girl pushed Phoebe down onto the bed and set to work putting her hair into pigtails, tying them in place with a set of pink ribbons that matched the cheerleading uniform. After that was a pair of lacy white ankle socks, and then, finally, the girl slid the uniform into place, covering the nearly nude Phoebe.

It had been hard to judge exactly how long it was while the girl had been holding it, but it turned out to be even shorter than Phoebe had expected, meaning she flashed her childish underthings with nearly every move she made, much to her embarrassment. “Aww, so cute! You’re going to look so cute, sitting out there on the field working on your homework!” the girl teased. Before Phoebe could respond, the girl had her back up on her feet and was guiding her back to the kitchen, where the doll was stll complaining about its messy diaper. The girl already had a changing pad and supplies laid out.

Phoebe glanced over at the clock on the stove, heart lurching a bit as she saw how late it was. She had no doubt that her boss had already called to see where she was, but she didn’t have her phone, and it didn’t seem likely that the girl was going to give it back anytime soon. “I need to get going,” she whined.

“Already? You just went! Well, at least you have some protection now.” The girl laughed when she saw the look on Phoebe’s face. “Sweetie, you aren’t going anywhere. If you ask me one more time, I’ll have to punish you. Now change your sister.”

Phoebe sighed, kneeling down in front of the changing pad. The doll toddled up to her, and she laid it down, going through the same process as the night before, though this time there was a brown stain on the seat of the diaper from the colored water she’d been forced to feed it. The doll was happy to go back to running around once she was finished, but she wasn’t given the same chance.

“You might as well stay down there,” the girl told her. “You need to clean up after yourself, too.”

“Okay,” Phoebe sighed. It really was probably a good idea not to leave her puddle there until she got home from work. “Then can I leave?”

The girl shook her head. “You just don’t listen, do you? No wonder you can’t get good grades! Finish up here, then come to the living room.” The doll followed after the girl, leaving Phoebe alone. It was too bad she had to pass through the living room to get out, she mused, or she might be able to escape. Instead, all she could do was present herself for punishment and hope for something quick.

In the middle of her living room was a wooden desk, one like she’d had at school growing up. It hadn’t been in her apartment before, but that was starting not to shock her anymore. “There you are!” the girl exclaimed when she walked in. “Sit down!” Phoebe did as she was told, wincing as her sore backside came into contact with the hard seat. “You are probably the worst babysitting student I’ve ever seen,” the cheerleader said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though. It’s a good thing I live right next door so somebody competent will be around to watch your sister, since you clearly can’t do it. But even if you can’t babysit her, you still have to be nice to her. So you are going to write out, one hundred times, ‘I love my baby sister.’ Then, you are going to write two hundred times, ‘I will do everything my babysitter tells me to do,’ because when I’m here, I won’t just be watching her… You are going to listen to me, too. Just like you will at school. Then, finally, you are going to write three hundred times, ‘I must not wet my pants,’ because you are too old for that, aren’t you? Bad girl! You are not to get up until you’ve finished all of them, and if your little Pull-Ups are wet when you do get up…” The girl tapped the wooden spoon on her hand ominously. “Do you understand?”

Phoebe wanted to shake her head, to get up, to storm back to her room, get dressed, and head to work, where she was supposed to be. But she had been trying to do just that all morning, and it had only gotten her into deeper and deeper trouble. She sighed, hoping that her boss would understand when she finally did get her phone back to call her and try to come up with an explanation. “I understand,” she sighed, picking up her pencil and starting to write her lines, like a good little girl.

I was hoping to post this whole story at once, but things have been pretty hectic lately, so I’m not sure if I’d have it done by Christmas or not. So, to have at least some of it up by then, I’m splitting it up after all. I still hope to have it all done by the 25th, but I can’t guarantee that…Chapter 1 – Mommy Dearest“Weird,” Phoebe mused out loud as she stared at the box with its blank return address field. Her apartment was still full of boxes – she’d just moved in a few days before – and while there were a lot she should have been working on opening, this was the one that intrigued her the most. Her first piece of mail here, and not only wasn’t it junk mail, it was a package!With it being a week from Christmas, it made perfect sense that it would be a Christmas present, except that her mother had already given her presents to her before she’d moved, and, as far as Phoebe knew, she was the only person who had her new address. Not to mention that the shipping label had been printed out, and her mother was nowhere near technically competent enough to pull that off, though it would make sense that she would forget the return address. Of course, there was only one way to find out, but, unfortunately, the box was taped quite securely, and she’d been eating fast food since she’d moved, too busy to unpack all her kitchen stuff, or go grocery shopping.She picked the box up and gave it a shake, then ran her fingers along the layers and layers of tape keeping the thing shut, looking for a loose end. After a minute, she shrugged and dropped the box with a thud on the counter, turning her back on it to start looking through her other boxes, unfolding their tops in search of her knives. She gave a little jump as she heard another thump behind her, turning to see the box on the floor. She shook her head, chuckling to herself, hardly able to believe how freaked out she’d felt over something so silly. She just wasn’t used to living on her own yet… Though she could have sworn the box was far enough from the edge of the counter that it shouldn’t have just fallen like that.“Here we go!” She smiled as she produced a yellow-handled steak knife, kneeling down in front of the box and slicing it open. When she opened the top, she was greeted first by a Christmas card, a generic picture of Santa in his sleigh on the front, though it was clearly bulging, something else having been shoved inside. Beneath it was a mass of wadded newspaper, far too much to be able to tell what else the box contained. She picked up the card, opening it carefully to keep the papers that had been folded inside from falling onto her floor, then reading the inside.The card’s blandness extended beyond the cover, it turned out, to the simple “Merry Christmas” on the inside. Beneath that, however, was a message she certainly had not expected to see, written out in careful, precise handwriting, “Love, Daddy.” She dropped the card like it was toxic, wrinkling her nose in distaste and disbelief, hardly able to restrain herself from taking the cell phone out of her purse right then and calling her mother. What was wrong with that woman?! Phoebe had never known her father, and her mother knew quite well that, at this point, she had no real desire to change that, even though, lately, he had started taking an interest in it himself. Her mother kept telling her to give him a chance, and she kept telling her mother no… Why would she give him her new address?Her good mood immediately evaporated, and she kicked the box across the kitchen’s slick, linoleum floor, towards the garbage can. She had to admit, part of her was curious as to what he thought would make up for two decades of ignoring her, but her pride was strong enough to beat back her inquisitiveness… At least until she heard the rustling. It came several seconds after the box thunked against the counter, way more time than it should have taken anything inside of it to fall over. What was even stranger was the fact that it didn’t stop.Surely he hadn’t… But she rushed over to the box, just in case. She hadn’t seen any air holes, nothing that would suggest that something living could have made the journey in anything resembling comfort, but it sure sounded like he had put something alive in there. Her skin crawled just a touch as she remembered horror stories, probably – hopefully – just urban legends about people finding hoards of spiders or cockroaches or whatever in all sorts of things, but she told herself that if this was a kitten or something, she couldn’t just leave it trapped in there.Now that she’d given herself leave to care about what was inside more than who had sent it, her curiosity was back full force, and she was pretty eager to see what it could be, though that hope was tempered with just a hint of fear. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it wasn’t the feel of hair as she pushed aside paper. Her apprehension began to grow when she saw what looked like the back of a tiny person’s head. It was a doll, of course, she knew that, and yet, once she had cleared enough paper away to see it, the thing turned, looking straight at her with a loud, “Mama!”Despite knowing that had to be what was inside, she still found herself stumbling backward at the movement, tripping over her own feet and landing on her backside with a shocked, “Shit!” It looked like an old fashioned baby doll, crafted out of plastic, its painted on blue eyes staring blankly at her, until the eyelids bobbed down for just a second. It looked very much like it had come from fifty years ago or more, but it was obviously much newer than that, because, even half mired in the newspaper-filled box, it was moving quite smoothly, enough so to be just a little freaky to Phoebe. It didn’t help that the doll looked eerily like her. Other than being nothing more than paint, the eyes were the same color, and its pale face was dotted with freckles, just like her own. While its hair was pulled into pigtails and her own was just loose, hanging down not quite to her shoulders, both were the same shade of red, and both had bangs. It was definitely more than a little unsettling, even as she wondered why in the world her father would get her something like that. She supposed her mom could have sent him pictures of her, which could explain the resemblance, but that would mean that he had to have some idea of how old she was, right? Why would he think she would want some stupid doll?“Mama!” the doll repeated, lifting its little plastic arms up in the air. At the very least, it didn’t seem as if that part of it had been made to imitate her. It was hard to tell for sure, since it’s always hard to judge how you sound to others, but she was positive her voice was nowhere near that high and squeaky. Based on her or not, though, it sounded far less mechanical, and more real, than she would have liked. It was amazing how far kids’ toys had come since she was a little girl, but she was very glad she hadn’t had one of these when she was younger; she was pretty sure it would have given her nightmares.Considering how eerily familiar it looked, it seemed wrong to just throw it away now. She wondered if her mother would want it – it would serve her right to be stuck with the weird thing after what she’d done. Hell, she’d probably like it. It was almost too bad she’d already given her mother her Christmas presents, though maybe she could save it for her birthday, if she could stand having it in her apartment until then. Her apartment. The thought made her feel so grown-up, so mature. It was almost enough to make her forget that she’d just been given a baby doll as a Christmas present, and once she reminded herself, she made sure to mentally add that it was from a parent who didn’t know her at all, and had no idea how independent she was.“Mama!” the doll cried a third time, more shrilly and insistently this time. “Fine!” Phoebe snapped, getting up and lifting the doll out of the box. At first, she’d thought the doll was wearing a white dress with pink polka dots, but as she saw more of it, she realized it was a nightgown. Only the chest – and, as she fully extracted the doll from its prison, she saw a strip of them along the bottom hem as well – was polka dotted. The rest of the gown was covered in little pictures of cats saying “Meow!” and hearts. The border between the two designs was marked on one side by a yellow bow, and the sleeves and neck were lined in pink satin. Under the nightgown, where Phoebe couldn’t quite stop herself from looking, it was in something too thick to be anything but a diaper. It was supposed to be a real baby doll, she realized, just as she spotted something else in the box, something that turned out to be a little baby bottle, a tiny bowl and spoon, and a few packages of “baby food”. The top of the bottle looked as if it came off, and the mouth had been moving when it spoke, so she had a feeling that, if she were so inclined, she could feed the bottle to the doll… Which probably also meant that whatever she gave it would have to come out somewhere, which likely explained the diaper, including the spares she found near the bottle.Even that wasn’t all that was in the box, however. She could see just a glimpse of it and, thinking that maybe it was her real present, she set the bottle and the doll down on the floor and pulled the rest of the paper out of the box, revealing first a tiny doll’s bed with a safety rail that snapped into place, and then, to Phoebe’s surprise, a nightgown just like the one the doll was wearing, only in her own size. The idea of wearing the same thing to bed as her doll might have been cute a decade and a half ago, but now she simply rolled her eyes, hardly able to believe her father could have imagined she would want this.She set the box’s contents aside while the doll toddled around the room, only then picking up the papers that had been inside the card. The first page was written in Chinese, illustrated with a group of cryptic pictures that she couldn’t quite make out, but luckily, the second page seemed to be a translation:Three Simple Rules for Taking Care of Your Dolly:1. Do not leave her alone! She is too young to be left by herself!2. Change her quickly! She doesn’t like her diaper to stay wet!3. Keep her in bed from 8 at night till 8 in the morning! Good girls go to bed early, and need lots of sleep – and that includes you!“Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that,” Phoebe rolled her eyes, tossing the papers into the box. Was her father really so clueless that he thought she would want this? She understood that he’d been off partying or whatever for twenty years instead of being around kids, but he couldn’t possibly be that clueless, could he? If he really thought she was about to start carting around a baby doll with her everywhere she went, especially one that looked like her, or even that she was going to put it to bed, he had another thing coming.She got up off the floor, grabbing the box and tossing it into the garbage before going to the living room and plopping down on the couch with her tablet to check Facebook. She really should unpack more, and she told herself she’d do it later, but she knew that it was more likely that she would put it off yet again instead. As she flicked through her news feed, she wondered if she should have kept the instructions to give to whoever she unloaded the stupid doll on, but it wasn’t like they were important or anything. If she gave it to an adult, they were sure to ignore them, and if she found a kid to give it to, surely they would know how to play with a doll.She was just getting comfortable, curling up on one side of the sofa, when she heard a loud crash, followed by the doll’s cry. She sighed, curling herself up a little tighter in annoyance, only half-listening as the crying turned to giggles, followed shortly by another crash. “For God’s sake,” she grumbled, tossing the tablet onto the couch and getting up. She was sure the thing had just been bumping into things, yet she arrived in the kitchen just in time to see the doll reach up with its little plastic arms and shove another one of her boxes over before breaking out into laughter.“What the hell?!” Phoebe stomped over to the toy, aghast. What kind of a company would make something like that?! Who would knowingly inflict that kind of chaos upon a parent who already had a little kid to deal with?! It seemed needlessly cruel, and definitely not what she needed around her apartment. “Cut it out!” she demanded, despite feeling absolutely ridiculous for making any kind of demand of a doll. The thing looked up at her, with its youthful approximation of her face, and giggled again.“Okay, nope,” she shook her head, grabbing the doll up. “Not doing this.” The doll squirmed and whined in her hands as she pulled up its nightgown, searching its body for an off switch, her dislike for the designers growing when she came up empty. There was nothing, not even under the thing’s diaper, not even a battery compartment.“Baba, mama!” the toy demanded loudly. “Baba!”“Will you leave my stuff alone if I give you your stupid bottle?” Phoebe hissed at it, grabbing the bottle with a sigh. She set the doll down on the counter as she unscrewed the top of the bottle and filled it with water, then tried to hand it over. The doll’s little arms reached up, but its hands were just plastic, so it seemed to have trouble grasping it, meaning she was stuck holding the bottle as the tiny mechanical mouth opened and closed, water pouring into it. “Are you happy now?” she asked once it was over.“Wet, mama!” the doll announced.“Well, what did you expect?” she rolled her eyes, snatching up the doll and taking it over to the trash can, where she pulled the box it had come in back out. “I guess you can stay in here until I find you a new home, so you don’t knock over anything.“Wet, mama!” the doll shrieked, before starting to cry loudly.“Ugh!” There was no way she was changing a baby doll’s diaper, not at her age. It was bad enough she’d somehow convinced herself to give it water, but that was far enough. Despite what the “rules” had said, she knew it was just water in the doll’s diaper, and it wasn’t likely to hurt the plastic at all, so she ignored it as much as she could. After a few minutes, she had a brilliant idea, picking the doll back up and carrying it over to the bed the thing had come with. The rules had also mentioned putting it to bed, so surely there was something in the bed that would turn the toy off.At first, nothing seemed to change, the doll just tossing and turning and trying to get back up, but once Phoebe had snapped the rails into place, her hunch was proven right, and the doll’s eyelids slid shut. “Finally!” She shook her head, almost wishing she did speak to her father, to give him a piece of her mind over this annoying, completely immature and inappropriate gift he’d given her, but she supposed she would just have to settle for saying that all to her mother and having the woman relay the message. She almost picked up her phone to send the message right away, but managed to stop herself, knowing it was probably better to give herself time to calm down a little.Instead, she decided it was finally time to go see the city’s Christmas light display, something she’d kept putting off. She was running out of time now, however, if she wanted to get it done before the holiday, so, with nothing better to do, she grabbed her purse and headed back outside, texting her best friend, Joan, as she went. She had yet to really begin to feel the holiday spirit, and this latest gift hadn’t helped at all, but maybe the lights would. They’d always used to do the trick, anyway. Going with Joan and her daughter was also bound to help.Joan was a couple years older than her, and while Phoebe didn’t usually like kids, she had to admit that her little girl, Trixie, was pretty cute. She was almost six, and while she could certainly be as loud and annoying as most of the kids Phoebe had experience with, most of the time she seemed to be fairly quiet, and much smarter than Phoebe would normally give someone her age credit for. She was certainly still young enough to really enjoy going to look at Christmas decorations, though, and Phoebe’s mood definitely increased as she listened to the child oohing and aahing behind her.She went with them to McDonald’s afterward, a solution to her problem presenting itself as Joan complained about how she still wasn’t sure what to get Trixie for Christmas while the little tyke ran through the play area a few feet away. “I just got this weird doll, and a bunch of junk that goes with it if you want that,” Phoebe was happy to offer.“Hmm… Maybe,” Joan contemplated. “What does it look like? Do you have a picture?”Phoebe couldn’t help blushing a little. “Well, it looks a little like me.”Joan raised an eyebrow. “Really? And where did you get this? Are you sure you should be giving it away? It sounds like someone wanted you to have it.”Phoebe squirmed in her chair, shrugging. She supposed that was true, but it didn’t change her mind. “That doesn’t matter. Look, do you want it or not?”Joan shrugged. “Can you send me a picture?”“Yeah, I guess. I really just want to get rid of it. It’s kind of creepy.”“Oh, so you want to pawn it off on me? Thanks,” Joan teased her. “Only because it looks like me!” Phoebe insisted, deciding to leave out the whole crying part. It was a little mean to spring that on her friend, but she’d already dealt with a real baby, so Phoebe was sure she could handle it. Phoebe supposed it might still be a little strange, seeing her best friend’s little girl carrying around a doll that almost seemed based off of her, but it was better than having it in her own apartment, that was for sure. However, Joan was insistent on actually seeing it before she decided whether to take it or not, so Phoebe resigned herself to having to keep the thing at home for at least another day as Joan drove her to her house, where Phoebe had left her car.Still, there was a pretty good possibility that she was going to be able to get rid of the doll, so she was in a much better mood as she drove back to her apartment, at least until she got off the elevator on her floor and found most of the lights in her hall had seemingly burned out while she was gone, the few that weren’t out flickering ominously as she walked past. She thought back to the lobby, confirming to herself that those lights had been fine. She considered heading back to the elevator to go complain, but as she turned around, the doors closed with a ding, darkening the hallway that much more as it took away its light, heading back down to the ground floor.Her hands were shaking a little as she reached into her purse for her keys, getting a very strange feeling from this whole ordeal. Things only got worse as she approached her door and found it standing open. “Nope,” she shook her head, dropping her just discovered keys back into her purse and starting to search for her phone again while she began to turn to head back to the elevator. There was no way she was going in there now!“Is this your place?” Phoebe jumped at the voice, though more at the sudden appearance of the source of it, a woman who had appeared right behind her without warning. In the dark, it was hard to make much out, but Phoebe could see a mass of blonde hair, a pink dress with an apron over it, a pair of heels, and a strand of pearls around the woman’s neck, all of which made her appear like a shadowy version of the quintessential 50s housewife.“Yes, but…” Phoebe started to answer.“I’m so sorry, I had to get the super to open your door. I live right next door, and I heard your baby crying, and I knocked and knocked and just didn’t get an answer. I couldn’t believe you would just leave your little one there all by herself! But there was nobody else there!” The woman’s head tilted down, taking Phoebe in. “You look quite young to be having a baby, so I’m sure you just don’t know the proper way to find a reliable babysitter. It’s not your fault yours left on you, but you really should be more careful when you choose them!”“What?” Phoebe’s head was spinning a little as she tried to figure out what the woman was talking about. She looked at the open door again, making sure it was her own. “I didn’t hire any babysitter…”“Of all the irresponsible things!” the woman huffed. “What were you thinking, young lady?!”Phoebe shrunk back a little at the chastisement. “I-I don’t have a baby!” she squeaked.That was the wrong thing to say. The woman sputtered for a moment, then, without warning, she grabbed Phoebe’s ear and dragged her away from her door. She was wearing gloves, it turned out, as Phoebe felt cloth against her ear rather than flesh, but her grip was much harder than Phoebe expected, leaving her little choice but to stumble along beside the woman, stammering out protests as she was pulled into the next apartment. Considering how old fashioned the woman was dressed, Phoebe was surprised how modern the apartment looked, though she got to see only a glimpse of it in the dark as she was guided through it and into the kitchen.“I will not tolerate a mother saying things like that!” the woman declared, and, a moment after she released Phoebe, leaving the girl to rub her poor ear, she shoved a bar of soap into her mouth and shoved her into the corner of the kitchen. “I ought to spank your backside bright red for that!”Phoebe squirmed at that, reaching up to take the soap out of her mouth, confused and starting to get angry. “What the hell are you talking about?! It’s not a baby, it’s just…!”Before she could finish, the woman was beside her, snatching the soap back out of her hand and jamming it back into her mouth, though this time she didn’t just leave it there. As Phoebe whimpered and fidgeted helplessly, the woman began pushing the bar in and out, all around the girl’s mouth, coating her tongue, the roof of her mouth, the back of her teeth, and everywhere in between with the stuff, Phoebe’s protests only churning it up more and turning it into a mouthful of suds that dribbled down onto the front of her shirt, even after the woman stopped, positioning Phoebe back in the corner, soap back in place and not going anywhere this time.“Never let me hear you say that about your baby again, young lady!” the woman scolded her. “I went in to check on that poor thing, and you’d just left her in bed by herself, and in a wet diaper to boot! You’re lucky my daughter’s been out of diapers for years, or I would have you in one in a second to show you what it was like!”Phoebe’s heart thumped loudly in her chest, a hundred confused, conflicted thoughts clouding her mind at once as she fidgeted in the corner, feeling the front of her shirt growing wetter as the soapy saliva continued dripping from her mouth. When she tried to reach up to wipe her mouth, the woman was there in an instant to smack her hand away, and Phoebe shrunk down momentarily, afraid she had earned another scrubbing. She had barely even heard the woman come up behind her, she had just seemed to appear in total silence, though once it was done, Phoebe was sure she could feel the presence lurking right behind her, as she felt her mouth begin to burn slightly, her discomfort growing with every mounting second.When she stepped forward again, Phoebe flinched slightly, not sure what she had done now, only for the woman to remove the soap. “Did that do its job?” she asked.“Yes, I’m sorry!” Phoebe exclaimed, inadvertently letting out another stream of bubbly drool down the front of herself. The woman led her to the sink and gave her some water to rinse her mouth out with, and then guided her back to her own dark apartment. The woman didn’t bother to turn on the lights, yet she seemed to know the place better than Phoebe, navigating it flawlessly, having to pull the girl along a couple times as she tripped over boxes. Phoebe was rather surprised to find that her destination was her guest room, a place she had used purely as a place to store some of her boxes.But now, in the light shining in from the window, she could see the doll bed she had set up in the kitchen, purely to keep the doll quiet. The doll was still lying there, “asleep”, as Phoebe was shoved towards it. “Apologize to her,” the woman demanded. Phoebe turned around in shock. Surely now the woman had to see that it was just a toy! It was obvious! Then again, it should have been even more-so when the woman moved the bed in here. She knew it was stupid, but this was her own apartment now, and she wasn’t about to let some insane woman intimidate her here. “Listen, lady, I don’t know who you are, but this is just a doll! A stupid, creepy doll!” She picked the doll up out of the bed, its eyes sliding open as soon as she did, prompting a, “Mama, wet!” that grated on Phoebe’s nerves, making her even more upset. In the light, it almost looked as if the doll were glowing, but she was too annoyed to give that much thought as she yelled, “If you’re not out of here in 30 seconds, I will call the police! I have had enough of this!” The doll repeated what seemed to be the only thing it could say until it got changed, which set Phoebe just far enough over the edge to toss the thing onto the floor.It was the wrong move. “You’re the one who should have the police called on you!” the woman declared, rushing forward and grabbing Phoebe’s hand, twisting it behind her back and forcing her down, bending her over one of the boxes. Phoebe yelped and cursed and threatened, but only for another moment or two, before she felt the woman’s hand slap against her backside, far harder than she would have expected, had she even thought that such a thing was possible. “That is no way to treat your baby!” Phoebe tried desperately to wriggle her way free, but the woman was too strong, even before the spanking began. And once that started, there was no hope.Phoebe had thought the first smack was bad, but that was nothing compared to what the woman had in store for her after that. She cried out in shock and pain as the woman’s hand landed across her bottom, gasping out an ill-advised, “You wouldn’t dare!” before the woman showed her that she would, indeed, do far more than dare. It was clear from the start that there was no escape for Phoebe, that she was no match for her opponent. She didn’t even have time to resolve not to let the woman see her cry before she realized tears were already streaming down her face, and in a matter of minutes, she was kicking and screeching like a helpless child as the woman reddened every inch of her derriere. The next day was going to be a very uncomfortable one at the office, especially if anyone asked her why she was fidgeting so much in her chair.She was almost sure she could see things moving in the darkness of the room, a luminescent form zooming past and quivering before other shadowy figures began scattering off in different directions, but the whole night had been so surreal, and it was so hard to see through her tears, that she wasn’t sure whether to take that sight at face value or not. By the time the woman let her up, and she stood there, rubbing her sore bottom, staring up at the woman, still crying, she felt every bit like an ill-behaved six year old, so if she had been imagining things like one, that wasn’t much of a leap.“You’re lucky, young lady,” the woman informed her. “Next time I see you treating a child like that, your pants and underwear are coming down!”Phoebe cheeks flushed. She hadn’t thought there was any way for that to have been more humiliating, but she had not even considered that. She hated the idea of anyone seeing her naked – she certainly didn’t want this big, beautiful woman to do it, and definitely not for that purpose!“Now, you are going to apologize to your baby and change her diaper like a good mommy, aren’t you?” Phoebe knew it was likely meant as a rhetorical question, but the burning sensation in her rear was enough to prompt a swift, “Yes!” in answer as she wiped her eyes and nose, scanning the room for the doll. It was standing by the bed, and the light still made her think it might be glowing, just slightly. Swallowing what little pride she had left for the day, she knelt down, staring it in its plastic face. “I’m very sorry for how I treated you,” she said, the trauma enough to keep her from feeling quite as insane to be doing this. “Let’s get that diaper changed, okay?”She picked up the doll and laid it on the bed, plucking one of the rails out and tossing it aside, pushing its nightgown up to expose the diaper. It was surprisingly well made for doll clothes, looking quite similar to an actual diaper, with velcro standing in for the tapes. The water that had filtered through the doll earlier was mostly dry by that point, but with the woman watching, Phoebe didn’t dare mention that, or do anything but grab another diaper from the stack beside the bed and slide it onto the doll’s plastic bottom, fastening it snugly into place. She glanced anxiously behind her, hoping that would satisfy the woman, but she could barely see her features at all in the darkness, and, to play it safe, she decided to give the doll a hug and apologize again. “I’ll never do that again,” she promised.“That’s better,” the woman nodded. “Now, I hope I don’t have to come back over here… And you had better hope so, too. I think for now, you’d better get to bed. It’s nearly nine o’clock, far past the time that good little girls should be in bed.”Phoebe bristled slightly at that, but not enough to talk back. Honestly, after everything else, it seemed a silly thing to push her luck with. “Okay,” she agreed. “Good night!”Thankfully, the woman accepted that and left. Phoebe gave the doll a dirty look for starting all this, fighting the urge to open the window and throw the thing out. She had enough presence of mind to think about what that could mean if the woman came to check on her again, or if the woman got up before her and found the doll outside, which also made her worry about what would happen if she gave the doll to Joan. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea… She shook her head. What was she thinking?! She wasn’t going to let this stand! She probably should go straight to the police, but instead she resolved to call the super the next morning, see if she could get the bitch evicted, or, if not, get moved to a different apartment herself. She was still mostly packed, after all, though she would still run the risk of bumping into the woman… Maybe the cops would be better after all.But not that night. As much as she hated to admit it, despite how early it was, and how much she didn’t want to obey the woman’s order, she was feeling pretty wiped out from her little misadventure, and going to bed sounded very nice. She reached down to try to pick the doll up to put it back to bed, but it darted away. “Whatever,” she rolled her eyes. “Maybe this is a good place for you, anyway.” It was on the opposite wall as the woman’s apartment, so she shouldn’t be able to hear the doll anymore, and it was far enough from Phoebe’s own bedroom that she didn’t think she would be able to, either. She pulled a few boxes in front of the door as she left – she didn’t think the doll was tall or articulated enough to open the door, but she didn’t feel like taking chances – and slunk to her room.To her surprise, the nightgown that matched the doll’s clothes was lain out on her bed. She wasted no time snatching it up and tossing it onto the floor. There was no way she was going to dress herself up like that damn doll. Instead, she stripped out of her clothes, taking a moment to wincingly peek at the damage that had been done to her tush in the full length mirror on her closet door, and put on her own pajamas, a cami and tiny shorts in leopard print. It was a bit chilly for them, but they were what she had unpacked so far – though she could have sworn she’d gotten more out – and, frankly, she wanted something as far from the childish nightgown crumpled on her floor as she could get. Besides, she told herself, she liked having to cuddle up under a bunch of blankets anyway.After doing just that, she stared out at her clock, rolling her eyes as she saw how early it was. What was she doing? She was neither 8 nor 80, there was no reason for her to be in bed this early! But now that she was in it, it was so much warmer than the outside air, so she decided she could stay for just another minute or two, and then she’d get up and actually get something done. But, of course, that never happened, and before she knew it, she was fast asleep.